Hannah Foster* has built her life around justice.
“I’ve always been really big on things being fair, even if it’s detrimental to me,” she told IW Features. “Even when I was little, if I perceived that something wasn’t fair, I would get really upset about it.”
That instinct led her down a path most people wouldn’t attempt, let alone see through to completion. She graduated high school early, earned a full ride to college studying criminal justice and psychology, worked as a 9-1-1 operator, became a police officer, served seven-and-a-half years in the U.S. Marine Corps, and then decided to enroll in law school.
By early 2025, she was in her final semester at Tulane University School of Law in New Orleans, just weeks away from taking the bar exam and starting the next chapter of her career. But then, in a crowded New Orleans bar during Mardi Gras, everything changed for her.
That evening was supposed to be a normal night. Foster had attended a professor-led Mardi Gras tour, watched a parade, and stopped for some drinks with classmates. Nearing the end of her night out, she popped into a small bar called the Abbey near her apartment to have one more drink.
Seated at the L-shaped bar, she said she struck up a casual conversation with a couple visiting from out of town when another patron, whom Foster thought looked like a transgender internet influencer from the YouTube channel Jubilee, inserted himself into the conversation.
But Foster only noticed his resemblance to the YouTube influencer “in passing,” she said. “I didn’t say anything to anybody about it.”
Suddenly, yelling started, she recalled. At first, she thought it was a nearby fight, but then she realized the man was pointing at her and screaming. The music was loud, Foster recalled, but through the noise she thought the individual was angry about a perceived rejection. Confused and eager to de-escalate the situation, Foster said she put her hands up “just to kind of say like, ‘I don’t have a weapon, then can we just chill out?’”
But according to Foster, the man then jumped over the bar and started attacking her. Foster said she did not provoke the attack and was confused when the interaction escalated. What followed was violent enough that Foster’s memory fractured.
“I remember the first few seconds, and then after that, I don’t remember anything,” she told IW Features.
When she came to, she was back in her apartment––but injured, disoriented, and in pain.
“My shoulder was throbbing, and I had a huge clump of hair taken out of my head,” she said.
Her hand had been bitten, her head was bruised, but the most serious damage was deeper. The man broke her shoulder’s ball socket joint, and at first doctors also suspected additional fractures like a broken elbow, too, “but it just turns out the tissue was so damaged and swollen that I just couldn’t straighten my arm for a couple of months,” she said.
At the hospital, the severity of the attack became clear, with Foster recalling that a doctor admitted, paraphrasing, “‘This is attempted murder. This is not assault.’” According to the police report, obtained and reviewed by IW Features, the charge is L.A.R.S. 14:34.1 Second Degree Battery.
While the police report identifies the offender as “unknown,” Foster identified the suspect as a self-identified “black trans woman,” who goes by the mononym Raven. The official report indicates his sex as “male,” his race as “Black/not of Hispanic origin,” and that he was “dressed in feminine attire/wig.” According to Foster, he reportedly works at a voodoo store on the outskirts of the French Quarter.
Despite the severity of the attack, Foster says the response from law enforcement has been minimal––alarmingly so, considering she is a former law enforcement professional herself.
According to Foster, she called the police when she got back home from the emergency room. But upon reporting the assault, she said it took them almost 12 hours to arrive. And ever since, she said, “They have not been doing very much.”
Foster alleged officers failed to adequately photograph and preserve evidence of her injuries, though the police report states officers documented injuries using body-worn cameras. When law enforcement went to the bar to review the footage of the attack, Foster said investigators later told her the full footage was no longer available.
Foster said it seems progress in the investigation has stalled.
“They told me that they had a warrant out for the person,” she said. But when she asked if—or when—they were going to serve the warrant, Foster said the police department stopped responding to her emails.
As a former police officer, Foster said she knows how unusual that is.
“I would’ve been fired immediately” for handling a case this way, she said.
Foster told IW Features she could have stayed silent, but couldn’t justify it.
“Honestly, if it was something that I thought I did to the person, then I probably wouldn’t have even called the police. If I had thought I’d deserved it somehow, I would have just gone to the hospital, gotten treated, and called it a day,” she said. “But the fact that I didn’t say anything to this person, I did not provoke this person, and they’re still out there. What if they do it again?”
Making matters worse, Foster dealt with complications from the attack for months afterward.
“I had surgery, they put in metal, and then I got a bone infection,” Foster said.
To this day, Foster has had six surgeries total, and she says the physical limitations have reshaped her daily life.
“I can’t even lift one of my arms parallel. I can’t put it straight out in front of me,” she said.
Now, simple tasks have become impossible, such as carrying belongings on errands. Her formerly active and athletic lifestyle has instead been replaced by restrictions.
Furthermore, even when she can go outside, Foster says it’s difficult to bring herself to want to when she has only one working arm. Her environment now feels unpredictable, even dangerous, as she says she has to be careful about people bumping into her.
The timing for this incident couldn’t have been worse.
“I had to miss taking the bar exam,” Foster said, adding that she’s missed out on career and educational opportunities as a result.
“There are several jobs that I was offered before, but then they were like, ‘Oh, wait, never mind. We’re going to take somebody with a bar license,’” she said.
Foster said she also felt like she had to leave New Orleans, in part because of the trauma from the assault.
“I really liked New Orleans. I liked where I lived,” she said. “But after that, I thought I can’t live in a city where this can happen and then the police are just like, ‘Oh, well, whatever.’ I mean, and if they’re doing that to me and I’m a veteran and a former police officer and they know this, I can’t imagine how they’re treating everybody else.”
More than a year later, Foster said her case remains in limbo. When asked what she would say directly to the police department, her answer was simple: “I would just tell them to do their job,” she said. “If you’re not going to do your job, why are you working there?”
For a woman who has spent her life enforcing the law, and is still trying to practice it, that question remains unanswered.
IW Features reached out to the New Orleans Police Department for comment but did not receive a response in advance of publication.
Whether the alleged lack of action in Foster’s case stems from fear of bad optics or something more deliberate, she said the result remains the same: a violent attack was perpetrated by a known suspect with an unserved warrant.
“I don’t know if it has more to do with race or ‘gender identity’ or both, but it’s just very strange,” she said, noting the alleged attacker’s identity as a “black trans woman.”
At the same time, Foster is careful not to reduce law enforcement’s alleged slow-walking to a single explanation.
“I think they’re just worried about themselves and what it would look like if they arrested a black trans woman for beating up a white girl,” she said.
But for Foster, this means justice has begun to feel selective. And at that point, it stops being justice at all.
*A pseudonym has been assigned to protect this storyteller’s identity.
