Ex-New Orleans officer sentenced

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NEW ORLEANS, Oct. 6 (UPI) -- An ex-New Orleans police officer received a 6 1/2-year prison sentence for his role in covering up deadly shootings by police after Hurricane Katrina.

Ignatius Hills, who was sentenced Wednesday by U. S. District Court Judge Martin L.C. Feldman, had pleaded guilty in federal court in June in the coverup of the Sept. 4, 2005, Danziger Bridge shootings, in which police fatally shot two people and wounded four others, the U.S. Department of Justice said.

Hills had testified as a prosecution witness in a trial that resulted in convictions of five officers in the shootings.

In another case related to the shootings, U.S. District Court Judge Sarah Vance refused a request from prosecutors to reduce the eight-year sentence of former officer Michael Hunter, who had also pleaded guilty and cooperated with the government in the Danziger Bridge case.

In August, a jury convicted five current or former New Orleans police officers in the shootings -- four on gun and civil rights charges and a fifth, who wasn't at the shooting scene, of corrupting the investigation and planting evidence.