Five teens’ deaths signal crime’s return to New Orleans

Five teenagers were gunned down in New Orleans early Saturday in a brazen crime that has shaken the city and police as returning residents struggle to regain their footing after Hurricane Katrina.

Police said the young men, aged 16 to 19 years old, were sprayed with bullets while sitting inside a sport utility vehicle, in the working-class Central City neighborhood, long notorious for its drug trafficking activities, police said. The victims’ names have not been released.

The incident follows a rash of crimes in Jefferson Parish, which lies just west of New Orleans and is one of seven parishes that comprise the New Orleans metropolitan area.

It confirmed what many here feared: violent crime is making a comeback along with displaced residents.

Police statistics show that 52 people have been murdered in the city since Jan. 1, half the number of murders at this time last year. But the population is also much smaller. After Katrina pummeled New Orleans on Aug. 29, it scattered more than half of the city’s 450,000 residents across the U.S.

Capt. John Bryson, commander of public affairs for the New Orleans Police Department, said investigations into the shootings of the teens, who included three 19-year-olds, a 17-year-old, and a boy aged 16 were ongoing, and any preliminary police statements were speculative.

“It appears to be either a retaliatory murder, or drug-related, or both,” said Bryson, former commander of New Orleans’ sixth police district, which covers Central City. “Whoever the perpetrator, or perpetrators were, who carried out this heinous crime, they meant for every one of these individuals to be dead. Believe me, they were not trying to scare them.”

A semiautomatic weapon was used to fire multiple rounds, the police captain said. Several gun casings were scattered at the scene.

According to Bryson, the crime scene appeared to indicate that one of the 19-year-olds had gotten out of the car when confronted by the assailants.

“He received a single gunshot wound to the head, and fell where he was shot,” Bryson said. “The weapon was fired into the vehicle, fatally wounding the other four.”

One teen, who was sitting in the front passenger seat managed to get out of the car, but collapsed about 100 feet away. He sustained four gunshot wounds, and later died in surgery, Bryson said.

Bryson said speculation that the homicides were drug-related stems from the fact that Central City, located close to New Orleans’ central business district, had long been a haven for illicit drug activity, and police had made several arrests in that area recently.