Some Wear Out Their Welcome

While most of the 14 Hurricane Katrina victims who arrived on charter buses from Louisiana last week are steadily adjusting to life in Cincinnati, one is in jail and some host families are growing weary of caring for evacuees.

Daniel Eaton, 44, of St. Bernard Parish, La., opened and drank a 24-ounce Bud Ice beer — valued at $1.49 — at the Over-the-Rhine Kroger store Saturday afternoon, according to Cincinnati police. He then threatened to kill a police officer and had a crack pipe in his possession, according to city prosecutors.

He was being held at the Hamilton County Justice Center.

Eaton arrived in Cincinnati Thursday aboard one of three charter buses Cincinnati City Councilman Christopher Smitherman and a group of 13 volunteers took to Baton Rouge, La., to drop off supplies and bring back evacuees from shelters there.

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“We are in prayer for Danny,” Smitherman, who plans to lead another trip to Louisiana Saturday, said Tuesday.

“It was a bad decision for him on his part to do that,” Smitherman said of the incident at Kroger. “You got to know what the rules are when you come to a new place.”

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Other hosts of evacuees said they are growing weary.

“I’m just really perturbed,” said Jayne Lawrence, 55, of Williamsburg. She is hosting a pair of sisters-in-law — Kathryn and Rachel Hyde — at her home.

The women told Smitherman’s group that their husbands are serving overseas in the military. The women said the military had moved them from Prescott, Ariz., to New Orleans just five days before the hurricane struck.

But after sharing her home with the two for five days, Lawrence said Tuesday, she is doubting their story.

Lawrence, a former EMT worker who has been out of work since she had two hip surgeries in March, said she has encouraged the women to get jobs, but that they seem interested only in food stamps.

“I think that’s what I’m doing is getting scammed,” she said. “It seems they don’t want help. They want handouts.”

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