Katrina victim tells Lee about leaving mom's body

One of the most poignant interviews in the Hurricane Katrina documentary "When the Levees Broke" is given by a man who lost his mother in the aftermath of the storm, filmmaker Spike Lee said.

In the interview, Herbert Freeman recalls his mother's death at the New Orleans Convention Center and the moment he had to leave her body there as he and other evacuees were taken out of the city.

"Before he got on a bus — he had a piece of paper, wrote his name, his cell number and her name and placed the paper between her fingers, her body," Lee said in an interview aired Sunday on ABC's "This Week."

"How could this happen, in the — supposedly — the wealthiest, mightiest country in the world? Really, that's the question," Lee said.

The four-hour film, divided into four acts, examines the government's response to Katrina. The first two parts debut today on HBO and the remaining acts will be shown Tuesday.