New Orleans shootings leaves two dead and 10 injured, police say
New Orleans police said 10 people were hit in an early morning shooting on the edge of the city’s historic French Quarter, an area popular with residents and tourists.
Hours later in another part of town, another shooting killed two men and wounded two others. Police said both shootings remain under investigation, and authorities did not immediately draw any connection between them.
Two of the 10 people shot on Canal Street near the French Quarter were in critical condition in local hospitals, New Orleans police superintendent Shaun Ferguson said.
“What happened in our city overnight was a cowardly and senseless act that we cannot and will not tolerate,” Ferguson said in a statement on Sunday.
“To the victims – you are in our thoughts and prayers, and we will work tirelesssly to bring those behind this cowardly act to justice. That is a promise,” Ferguson added.
No arrests were announced by midday Sunday, and police did not immediately release information about any of the victims. No motive has been ascribed to the incidents.
The first shooting took place at 3.20am local time on a busy commercial block of Canal Street that has streetcar tracks and is near many hotels.
The shooting on Sunday afternoon that killed two men and wounded two others happened in a residential area about 3 miles (5 km) north of the French Quarter.
Police initially said 10 people were wounded. They later said 11 were wounded, but the police department then sent a statement saying the correct number was 10.
Ferguson said police quickly responded to the scene as patrols were heightened for this weekend’s Bayou Classic, the annual Thanksgiving weekend rivalry football game between Grambling State and Southern University that’s played at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome.
The mass shooting marks the second such incident to occur over the Bayou Classic weekend in recent years. In 2016 nine people were injured and one person killed in a shooting in the French Quarter sparked by a personal dispute.
Ferguson said New Orleans has seen a significant reduction in violent crime over the past four years. But the city continues to grapple with high rates of gun violence. An analysis of crime data by the Advocate newspaper in April showed that while the murder rate in New Orleans had fallen by 40% in the first quarter of 2019, the rate of violent gun crime had remained relatively stable.
According to the paper’s analysis 100 people were either killed or injured by gunfire in the first three months of 2019, compared with 123 during the same time period the previous year.
Last year there were 141 murders in the city, the lowest number since 1971.