By Fox 8 Staff
August 23, 2023
New Orleans police are investigating multiple separate overnight shootings that left at least one person dead and four people injured on Tuesday (Aug. 22). Two of the surviving victims were juveniles.
Police found a man shot and killed in the 2400 block of Eads Street near St. Roch late Tuesday night. He was pronounced dead on the scene. His age and identity have not been disclosed.
Around the same time, officers say two people were shot on South Claiborne and Second Street. Wednesday morning, debris still littered the block. Investigators say shooting victims crashed a vehicle into a pickup truck just before midnight.
Antonio Chapelle says the truck belongs to his sister. He says the scene was chaotic right in front of her house.
“She said she saw someone shooting a nearby house. I don’t know which one. But then there was a car. It looked like the man driving was shot because he was bleeding. He had blood all over his head,” Chapelle said.
Investigators say someone inside the car pushed a man into the street who was suffering from a gunshot wound and fled on foot. The car took off again.
“When he got out of the car, he fell to the floor and we saw all the blood. Another man took the car but it was smoking,” Chapelle recalled.
Chapelle says EMS arrived and worked on the victim in the street before rushing him to the hospital.
The car was later found crashed at the Poydras Exit of Hwy. 90 where police found a 15-year-old inside, suffering from multiple gunshot wounds.
“There’s so much we don’t know about it, but what we are seeing is a trend in which shooting victims are teenagers,” said Rafael Goyeneche, head of the Metropolitan Crime Commission.
The juvenile victim was one of two teens injured within an hour of each other.
The NOPD says a juvenile and another man arrived at the hospital with gunshot wounds. Police have not determined where that shooting happened at this time.
“There have been 48 juvenile shooting victims so far this year,” Goyeneche says. “Usually the age of the victim is indicative of the age of the shooter. So a lot of the shootings that we are seeing are intentional shootings.”
Goyeneche says the best way to stop retaliatory shootings and murder is to arrest those involved. Of the 158 murders so far this year, Goyeneche says the NOPD has made 44 arrests.
“That’s a 29% arrest rate,” Goyeneche says. “That means that 70% of the people that committed a homicide this year are still on the streets.”