NEW ORLEANS — A New Orleans family is overcome with grief, after a young boy is gunned down in the Seventh Ward.
Tuesday, his father and two grandmothers returned to scene where Devante Bryant lost his life.
The nine-year-old was killed and two other children were wounded in a triple shooting, Monday evening.
The shooting happened in the 2100 block of Pauger Street near the front steps of Devante’s home.
“I’m so sorry because you’re my baby,” Devante’s father Donald Bryant cried out “It’s hard. They killed my baby. They killed my baby.”
Devante’s dad called the killing deliberate and cruel.
“It wasn’t no mistake,” Bryant said. “He was trying to get inside. They shot him in the back of his head and they shot him in his back.”
The NOPD said a teenage boy was also shot in the leg and a teenage girl wounded in the stomach.
According to a law enforcement source, police found a white Jeep which matches the description of the getaway car used in the deadly attack.
Officers found the Jeep parked outside an Algiers apartment complex.
Police are still searching for suspects.
Devante’s grandmothers are heartbroken.
“He’ll never get a change to go to high school,” Monica Walker said. “He’ll never get a chance to grow up because somebody took his life. Just senseless killing for nothing.”
“He was a great kid with nothing but ideas to lead the world,” Trinell Brown said. “This is wrong.”
Throughout the day, family, friends and strangers brought candles, flowers and prayers to a memorial in front of the Bryant’s home.
“It could be my grandchildren,” Janette Robinson Lewis said. “I gave 6 grandchildren. It could have been my child.”
“We talk about different issues as it pertains to the Black Lives Matter movement,” said New Orleans Deacon Ricky Clark. “But, do we really matter to us? That’s what I’m trying to get out. What do we matter to ourselves?”
The Dean of Students at the school which Devante attended, Success Preparatory Academy, said the tragedy had left her community “numb.”
“He was such a bright kid,” the dean, Joyce Poole, said in a statement. “He loved school and we loved having him here. what do you say to a family who has to bury a 9-year-old?”
The family told WWL-TV, they plan to bury Devante on what would have been his tenth birthday, July 31
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