Mass shooting in New Orleans leaves 5 people injured

By Edward Era Barbacena

Five people were shot on Bourbon Street early Sunday (Nov. 27), marring what had been a festive celebration on the weekend of the Bayou Classic football game.

New Orleans police said the gunfire broke out around 1:49 a.m. in the 200 block of Bourbon Street, leaving multiple victims wounded in the French Quarter. The NOPD said the victims included three males and two females, but did not disclose their ages.

NOPD spokesman Gary Scheets said none of the victims’ injuries are considered life-threatening.

Police said an argument took place before an unknown male suspect “produced a gun and began firing into the crowd, striking multiple victims.” All five shooting victims were taken for hospital treatment by New Orleans EMS personnel, and the trauma center of University Medical Center activated emergency staff under its mass casualty event protocol.

“Two individuals have been detained for questioning to determine whether they are involved in the incident,” Scheets said. “Weapons were taken from both individuals.”

NOPD Supt. Shaun Ferguson was among the officers who responded to the scene -- the second shooting in the area in the span of about five hours -- on a weekend when tens of thousands of additional visitors are in town for the annual Bayou Classic football game between Grambling State and Southern University.

The NOPD also said it was investigating the homicide of an 18-year-old man who was shot Saturday at 8:42 p.m. That victim was shot multiple times in the 700 block of Canal Street, near the intersection with St. Charles Avenue on the edge of the French Quarter and Central Business District. Police said that victim died at the hospital, but responding officers were able to apprehend a 15-year-old boy suspected in his killing. Neither the victim’s nor the suspect’s identities have been disclosed.

The NOPD has not said whether the shootings are related.

Sunday’s incident was New Orleans’ third mass shooting on Bayou Classic weekend in the past six years.

On the weekend of the 2016 game, 10 people were shot -- one fatally -- in the 100 block of Bourbon Street. The victims in the Nov. 27 shooting included eight men and two women, ranging in age from 20 to 37 years old.

Three years later, on the weekend of the 2019 game, another 10 people were shot in the 700 block of Canal Street. In that case, police booked Stafford Starks Jr. and LaBryson Polidore each with 10 counts of attempted first-degree murder. Court records show District Attorney Jason Williams’ office offered both shooters plea deals earlier this year that downgrading their charges to 10 counts of aggravated assault with a firearm. Starks was sentenced to 10 years in state prison, with three years of that term suspended. Polidore also received a 10-year sentence, which Criminal District Judge Darryl Derbigny suspended in its entirety. Derbigny also gave both men three years of supervised probation.

In 2015, the Bayou Classic weekend was marred by the Nov. 28 fatal shooting of Brandon Robinson, a bouncer killed outside the Prohibition Bar and Balcony in the 300 block of Bourbon Street. Terry Mack, a then 22-year-old Baton Rouge resident, pleaded guilty to manslaughter in 2017 and is serving a 30-year state prison sentence for that killing.

And in 2010, a 23-year-old man was shot in the abdomen and a 39-year-old man was wounded in the leg by a gunman who opened fire in the 500 block of Bourbon Street on Bayou Classic weekend.