NOLA - Shooting injures 7 on parade route

[Mendoza Line]

Happy Mardi Gras everyone!!

What I don't miss about New Orleans:

Seven people, including a toddler, were injured this afternoon after a shooting spree broke out along the St. Charles Avenue parade route near Second Street, according to the New Orleans Police Department.

The shootings happened about 1:40 p.m. after the last major parade of the celebration, Rex, had ended. Truck floats that follow the parade were passing when gunfire broke out.

Police officers stationed along the parade route chased down men who fled the scene, capturing two suspects.

Early Tuesday night police brought two suspects, 20-year-old Mark Brooks and 18-year-old Louis Lazone, to the jail gates. Each will be booked with seven counts of attempted first-degree murder.

"It sounded like a string of fireworks," said Toni Labat, 29, a window company manager. She was with her two children, a 2-year-old boy and a 10-year-old girl.

"Everybody was petrified. They hit the ground, the floats stopped, everybody on the floats ducked," Labat said.

Labat said one man dragged himself on the ground screaming for help after being wounded and another man was gasping for air and bleeding from his mouth.

Of the six victims, two are listed in serious condition. They are both men around 20 who were shot in the abdomen, according to Jeb Tate with New Orleans EMS.

The five others suffered less serious wounds, according to police and EMS. They include a 20-month-old boy with a graze wound to the back; a 17-year-old girl shot in the thigh; a 50-year-old woman shot in the elbow; a 15-year-old boy with a graze wound to his back and and 30-year-old man with a graze wound to the thigh.

All appeared to be innocent bystanders in the area for the day's Carnival parades, said NOPD Deputy Chief Kirk Bouyelas.

Dr. Jim Parry, 41, a surgeon was with his two children on ladders catching beads from passing truck floats when he heard the shots. He turned around, saw a man lying in the middle of the street and ran to provide assistance. The man had been shot in the abdomen. "He kept asking me, 'Was I shot? Was I shot?'"

Paramedics arrived and took over for the Air Force reservist.

"I'm off to Afghanistan this summer. Damn, this is more dangerous than Afghanistan," Parry said.

Welcome to New Orleans!!

Two male suspects were arrested shortly after the shooting, when police officers on parade duty heard the gunshots and chased them on foot. They were apprehended at Carondelet and Second streets, where officers found them carrying three guns, Bouyelas said.

"The important thing to note is that the officers were here at the scene and quick to respond," he said.

Bystanders agreed that police officers immediately rushed to the scene, running after the men who fled down Second Avenue toward Carondelet Street.

The violence along the oak-lined Uptown streetcar line marred what had been a generally peaceful day of revelry in which hundreds of thousands of people partied in the streets on the final day of Carnival. Another shooting was reported on Friday night after an argument, but otherwise, the event was generally problem-free.

Uptown resident Beau Beals, 45, was outside a house party on the lake side of St. Charles Avenue when the shooting happened.

Beals said he saw a group of young men in front of the Hedgewood Surgical Center at 2427 St. Charles, facing the crowd on the neutral ground. That's when he heard about nine pops and saw smoke, then noticed a man lying in the street.

Upon hearing all the commotion, NOPD officer Sabrina Richardson, who was working a private detail at the party Beals was attending, pushed some of the people inside of the house and bolted outdoors to the scene. He said he and other revelers tossed children over a metal fence to get them to safety.

Many people watching the parade on the neutral ground kept waiting for beads and other trinkets being tossed from the floats as if nothing had happened.

"There was an ambulance that was picking up a guy off the street and people didn't even stop vying for throws," Beals said.


Other than the shootings, Mardi Gras has been problem free!

Thanks, NOPD, you're the best!!