In November, Gibson was arrested by New Orleans police on charges of possession with intent to distribute heroin.



According to the Times-Picayune, Gibson had been driving his rental car erratically and nearly struck a police cruiser. When the officers set out after him, Gibson stopped the car, and he and another man ran toward the Fischer housing complex. That’s where they were caught by the officers and taken into custody.

It was a swift and embarrassing nosedive. “He came home and was his old self, getting right back into the same old things,” Bernice Gibson said. “You can’t tell Jabbar nothing. He’s hard-headed. I tried to tell him that what he’s doing wasn’t working.”

While he was out on bond, in January 2006, Gibson was arrested again. He was charged with cocaine and heroin trafficking and possession of a gun while dealing drugs.

Gibson was carrying 1.7 grams of cocaine, an undisclosed amount of heroin, and a .357-caliber revolver when he was caught by New Orleans narcotics detectives and federal agents, according to the Times-Picayune.

When media reports referred to Gibson this time, they placed quotation marks around “hero.” He was sentenced to two years in a medium-security federal prison in Yazoo City, Mississippi.

“I was the main one disappointed in him,” said Tranice Gibson. “Actually, I’m pissed at him.”

While Gibson was in prison, he claims he missed out on a chance to appear in Spike Lee’s HBO documentary about Katrina, When the Levees Broke. (Lee’s production company did not respond to a request for comment.) All those promises of homes and money the Gibsons claim Oprah made to them never materialized. (A spokesperson for Winfrey said, “Oprah Winfrey spoke with numerous individuals during her 2005 visit to the Houston Astrodome and through the Angel Network supported organizations which further aided various people and communities. We cannot verify that any outreach was made to this specific individual.”)

“If Jabbar don’t get in trouble with the law, he’d be a millionaire,” said Deidra Gibson, another cousin who today lives in the Fischer. “Oprah would’ve made sure of that. To scheme on some small-time money like he was doing, it didn’t make sense.”

When he was released in 2008, Gibson moved into a two-bedroom, shotgun-style home in Gretna, only a short drive from the Fischer but far enough from the trouble.

He lived there with his girlfriend Shareena and their daughter Sha-Mei. He got a job as a construction worker.

When he crossed paths with an officer who was familiar to him, he felt as confident as ever that he was done with the streets. The cop, who knew him from past arrests, wasn't so sure. “Nice jeans,” Gibson said the officer told him, a smirk on his face, then added that it would only be a matter of time before Gibson was back in the slammer.

Gibson admits that he was still dealing drugs, even as he tried to transition into becoming a family man. Gibson’s family say that he got lured into a turf war between rival neighborhoods and housing projects, a conflict that started over drugs.

“It was, like, a back and forth thing between Algiers and the projects,” Troy Gibson said. “They felt like Jabbar was down with those dudes at Fischer. And you know how it gets when there’s beef.”

One early afternoon in November 2008, Jabbar Gibson was driving home from work on Landry Avenue when he noticed a car following him. Soon after, Gibson said, he was pulled over by a police officer for a minor traffic violation.

The officer let him go without even a citation, Gibson said. That was unusual, he thought, given his history with police. Minutes later, the other car that had been following him pulled up alongside him and pointed a gun into his driver’s side window.

“All I saw was the gun,” he said. “When I woke up, I was in the hospital.”

He got shot three times, in his left cheek, in his left arm, and on the left side of his torso. Somehow, he survived.

Police never found the shooter, though Gibson and his family said they know who shot him. Gibson refuses to identify him, even from federal prison. “He’s around,” he said, cryptically.

Gibson hadn’t even fully recovered when he was arrested on charges of possession of cocaine and possession of a firearm by a felon. According to the arrest report, New Orleans police pulled him over for a traffic stop and found 5.4 grams of crack cocaine packaged for distribution hidden in his left shoe.

When media outlets covered his legal troubles this time, they didn’t even make reference to his heroic exploits five years earlier during Katrina. He was just another repeat drug dealer busted by the cops.

In October 2010, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Gibson and his family want his hurricane rescue to matter, to resonate beyond their projects, to define his life. But it could be that, much like his hometown post-Katrina, Gibson’s hardscrabble heroics captivated the nation for only a moment. Oprah and Spike moved on, and the newspapers now see him only as a criminal. When he went behind bars, his best moment disappeared with him.

“He could have been famous,” Bernice Gibson said. “Everybody was on his side. It could have changed everything for us. I was a little disappointed at first. But I had to get over it.”

On a recent summer afternoon, his family members gathered in the living room of a cousin’s home. Over the years, they have grown weary of talking about those post-Katrina days when they were forced from their homes and lost the few meaningful possessions they had. But today was different because they had a chance to talk about Jabbar.

“If it wasn’t for him,” said Deidra Gibson, one of his cousins, “we’d have been stuck here with nowhere to go.”

“They can say he went from a hero to a zero or whatever they want,” said Bernice Gibson. “He saved my whole family’s life, and he saved everyone in the Fischer. And the world should know it.”