NEW ORLEANS — Orleans Parish District Attorney Jason Williams and his mother were the victims of a carjacking in the city Monday, according to a spokesman for his office.
Williams and his 78-year-old mother were carjacked at gunpoint Monday evening while he helped her to her car.
It happened shortly after 10:00 p.m. Monday in the 1000 block of Race Street in the Lower Garden District according to NOPD.
WWL-TV's Paul Murphy obtained nearby security camera footage of the carjacking as it happened. While the incident happened just out of sight of the camera, Williams could be heard saying ‘Get out the car momma. Let me get my momma out of the car.’
"This tells you that this can happen to anybody. Nobody is immune from crime. Nobody is immune from all sorts of crime," DA Williams said in a WWL-TV Exclusive interview.
"Right now, I'm just glad to still be in the land of the living. I'm glad that nobody squeezed the trigger last night. I'm glad that my mother was able to get out of that car and that she's okay."
Williams says he was fearful for his mother's safety in that terrifying moment.
"Linda Frickey was on my brain because my mom doesn’t move very quickly now. I said I can’t until I get my mom out of the car. They kept repeating get out of the car, get out of the car. I said okay, put my hands up, two guns. I’m not going to fight anybody," he said.
Hearing of what Williams and his mother experienced, the Frickey family said in a statement to WWL-TV, “We are sorry to hear about the unfortunate carjacking of DA Williams and his mother. He has been very supportive of our family and in turn, we extend our thoughts to him at this time.”
Williams, wearing an orange shirt, is then seen in the video quickly walking with his mother away as the suspects drive off.
An initial report from NOPD says one of the suspects fled in William's Black Lincoln Navigator which was later recovered uptown by investigators.
Williams said he didn’t care whether or not the stolen car was recovered but said what matters most to him is that his kids still have their father in their lives.
“My five-year-old growing up without his dad, that would be a big deal. My 17-year-old going off to college without me in his life, that would be a big deal. Not seeing what my 23-year-old, in all her phenomenal dreams that she has for the next several years, if I did not get to see that, that's what's important."
Police are investigating and have not released any details on a possible suspect or suspects.
Police also report that this carjacking incident comes about 30 minutes before and about a half mile away from where a woman was carjacked by two suspects in the 1800 block of Baronne Street, however, investigators have not said if the two carjackings were committed by the same suspects.
As district attorney, part of Williams' job is to decide whether or not to prosecute carjackings, along with other violent crimes. He has made headlines by deciding to prosecute four teens as adults in the fatal carjacking of Linda Frickey in 2022. That case outraged residents.
According to NOPD stats, carjackings have dropped dramatically this year. Stats through September showed 171 carjackings in 2023, down 45 percent through the same period in 2022 when there had already been 309.
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