12 Shot in New Orleans Mother's Day Parade

[Red Mage Black]

Today's Breaking News! Found this on one of the most unlikely places on Earth, but here's how it stands: Source link first (http://rt.com/usa/new-orleans-parade-shooting-179/)


Twelve people are being treated for gunshot wounds following a shootout at a second line parade on Mother’s Day in New Orleans. The youngest victim in the surprise attack was 10 years old, according to a local resident.

Over 300 people were participating in the residential festival, on Frenchmen Street, in the east of the city, when several shots were fired. The incident occurred around 2pm local time on Sunday.

Nine people were immediately taken to University Hospital by emergency responders, eight of whom had gunshot wounds, according to local channel WWLTV. One more was injured in an attempt to escape from the shooting.

No fatalities have been confirmed, but four are in a critical condition.

Police confirmed the number of casualties stood at 12 following some discrepancies in initial hospital reports, suggesting that between five and 11 may have been injured.

Police believe three suspects were responsible for the gunfire, who were seen fleeing towards Claiborne Avenue. A door-to-door search is being conducted in the hopes of tracing one or more of them.

In the same way investigators of the Boston Marathon Bombings appealed for crowdsourced photographs, police have urged anyone with any photographs of the parade to step forward.

“The shots just started ringing out, and everybody just started running, and the next thing I heard, 10-15 people got shot,” one witness told local station WDSU.

A week ago, police were also called out to investigate a triple shooting near the corner of Frenchman street.

Police and local media had appealed for anyone with information on the incident to contact crime stoppers in the hope of tracing the gunman, or gunmen.

Taking bets on who or what they'll blame this time around? Since we apparently can't just have nutjobs. They HAVE to have a motive, right? I highly doubt this is terrorism, domestic or otherwise. Speculation and due to the amount of victims, it was more than one gunman.

Just relieved there aren't any fatalities. (At least not that we know of.)

In other not so surprising news, the boards /b/ and /pol/ are already crazed with 'tinfoil hatters' calling 'government false flags'. If that was so, wouldn't there at least be a death toll + more victims? Sometimes I don't know what to believe anymore. The last month and a half has already been bad enough.

[Magus]

I actually assume gang violence on this one, only because the nature of this parade has been described as more like a "mobile block party" than a sort of pre-planned parade. I'd have to hear an account of the exact nature of the shootings, though. But when I first read it it seemed like people getting caught in the crossfire of gang violence probably targeted at a few of the people in the parade.

At least nineteen people in New Orleans, including two children, were injured on Sunday when multiple gunmen opened fire on a Mother’s Day parade, police said.

A 10-year-old boy and 10-year-old girl were grazed by bullets but are in good condition, New Orleans Police spokesman Garry Flot said in a statement. A woman and a man were in surgery Sunday evening, but there were no fatalities and most wounds were not life threatening, police said.

According to police, most victims were grazed by bullets.

Authorities saw three people running away from the scene after the shooting. At least one suspect was described as a man between the ages of 18 and 22.

New Orleans Police Superintendent Ronal Serpas said there may have been as many as three shooters, and that two different types of weapons were likely used.

The victims were marching in what is known as a second line parade, which are common in New Orleans: A brass band plays while marching in the streets, while a “second line” of people follows the band, celebrating.

Police say the parade was just two blocks long.

“These are unusual circumstances. We have second lines which occur in the city of New Orleans virtually every weekend at this time of the year,” said Serpas. “We had a full complement of police officers. It appears that these 2 or 3 people just for a reason unknown to us, started shooting at towards, or in the crowd. It was over in just a couple seconds.”

Detectives are conducting interviews and retrieving surveillance video from around the crime scene. A spokesman for the New Orleans Police Department said he is confident swift arrests will be made.

In front of reporters late Sunday, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu urged anyone with information about the shooting to come forward.

Second lines have been targets for violence in New Orleans in recent years. In the past, shooters have targeted a specific person in the crowd, which authorities say may have been the case Sunday as well. But Landrieu dismissed the notion of outlawing the Louisiana tradition.

“It’s not the second line that did the shooting,” he said. “The cultural events are very important to us, it’s like calling for an end to Mardi Gras because someone takes an opportunity to shoot someone during one of our parades.”

“Second lines have been with us for a long, long time,” Landrieu added. “They are an important part of our culture and our heritage.”

This seems to confirm my suspicions--most of the people wounded were not actively being targeted, it would seem. I doubt that three guys shooting could fail to kill or severely wound several people if that was their intention--rather they were targeting specific individuals in the crowd. Of course, several people WERE wounded, but I don't know how severely. Only two have really been described as being "grazed", but that leaves ten others who were maybe more severely wounded. Maybe it was an actual attack on the parade, but, again, doesn't sound like it...

[Magus]

Just in case anyone wanted the follow-up on this:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/05/16/184437804/suspect-apprehended-in-new-orleans-second-line-shooting

"CAPTURED!"

That's how the New Orleans Police Department early Thursday that its officers had "arrested 19-year-old Akein Scott in connection with the shooting of 19 people on Mother's Day."

Update at 4:05 p.m. ET. Second Suspect Arrested:

New Orleans police and U.S. Marshals have arrested Shawn Scott, 24, the brother of Akein Scott. An additional four people were arrested and charged with harboring Akein Scott, the authorities about the developments Thursday afternoon.

Law enforcement officials also said that they believe the brothers are members of a gang called the Frenchman-Derbigny Boys. Both Akein and Shawn Scott have been arrested multiple times, for charges ranging from drug possession to resisting an officer.

"The identification, pursuit and arrest of Akein Scott and Shawn Scott makes it clear that we will not accept the culture of death and violence in our city," Mayor Mitch Landrieu said.

Police believe that the shooting's target was a member of a rival gang, reports.

While media and official reports have consistently put the number of people wounded in Sunday's attack at 19 victims, the arrest warrant charges each Scott brother with 20 counts of attempted second-degree murder.

Our original report continues:

WWNO , including a link to of Scott after he was taken into custody.

We about the surveillance video that police circulated and their appeal to the public for help in finding the suspect.

As :

"Police say Scott opened fire on Sunday about 1:45 p.m. on the annual Mother's Day second line organized by the Original Big 7 Social Aid and Pleasure Club as the parade passed the intersection of Frenchmen and North Villere streets.

"Ten men, seven women, a boy and a girl — both 10 years old — were struck by the hail of gunfire. Three people remained hospitalized in stable to critical condition on Wednesday. The other victims had all been treated and released, officials said."

The newspaper adds that at the time of the shooting, Scott "was out of jail on a $15,000 bail that Mayor Mitch Landrieu and Orleans Parish District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro said was too low for the gun and drug charges he faced."

So, gang violence. I'm glad the media did not speculate for days on end that it might be terrorists or something. On the other hand, 20 people were still injured in this shooting, perpetrated by two armed men with presumably illegal handguns, so one would have expected this to still have at least been on the front page of...something. I had to Google search for it. But I guess it doesn't matter if people shoot each other up unless they are terrorists or shooting up a school...