Bloodshed in the Big Easy
10 shot in NOLA’s French Quarter
Ten people were wounded in a shooting on a major thoroughfare in New Orleans’ French Quarter early Sunday, police said.
Police said later in the day it was still unclear who or what sparked the hail of bullets that erupted just after 3:15 a.m. on the historic neighborhood’s Canal Street.
“What happened in our city overnight was a cowardly and senseless act that we cannot and will not tolerate,” New Orleans Police Superintendent Shaun Ferguson told reporters.
Officers were stationed in the popular party precinct at the time because of the Bayou Classic college football game, an annual matchup between the Grambling State University Tigers and the Southern University Jaguars.
Police initially thought the gunfire was aimed at the officers.
“We had officers right there within that very block that actually thought that they were being fired upon and took a position to respond to this,” Ferguson said.
When officers arrived on scene, they continued to hear gunshots and immediately found victims, police said.
There were so many people in the area at the time, that it was difficult to determine who was firing shots, cops said.
Nine of the victims were taken to a nearby hospital and another person walked into a hospital with a gunshot wound, cops said.
Two were in critical condition, one wounded in the chest, the other in the torso.
No information on the identities, ages or genders of the victims was disclosed as of Sunday evening.
A person of interest was taken into custody near the scene, although it was not immediately clear what, if any, role they had in the shooting. No one had been charged by Sunday evening.
Authorities said they were gathering witness statements and surveillance footage.
New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell said in a statement that “when people resort to gun violence to resolve problems, it never creates solutions — only innocent victims and trauma.”
“The City of New Orleans will not allow incidents like this to derail the progress we have made, or to further disrupt our community.”
On the same weekend in 2016, a gunman killed one person and wounded nine others in a shooting on Bourbon Street in the French Quarter.
Another incident on Bourbon Street, in June 2014, also left one person dead and nine injured.