NEW ORLEANS — There was a trail of blood in front of several homes in the 3100 block of Frenchmen Street on the edge of the St. Roch neighborhood.
New Orleans police say a 15-year-old was shot and killed there and a 14-year- old was wounded during what neighbors described as a possible exchange of gunfire around 12:30 Tuesday morning.
“It was boom, boom, boom, boom, boom,” one neighbor who did not want to be identified said. “That stopped and the shooting started again from like a smaller caliber pistol. It was like they were returning fire, and somebody was shooting at them.”
One man spent part of the morning cleaning blood off his porch. He said one of the victims knocked on his door, seeking help after the shooting. One bullet was lodged in a nearby trash can.
Neighbors told WWL-TV that the teenagers may have been attempting to break in when shots were fired.
“If it was car burglaries and that was the reason why these kids got shot, I’m disappointed as heck to hear that,” neighbor Byron Laurent said. “But I’m not totally surprised because it’s been happening so much that people are getting frustrated.”
Laurent also said there have been a lot of recent car burglaries in the area. The NOPD released video of someone breaking into a vehicle early Monday morning in the 3600 block of Frenchmen, just blocks away from the overnight shooting.
“You hope that it will stop because you don’t want to see these young kids get hurt, get killed, but I’m not totally surprised that something like this happened,” Laurent said.
Another neighbor who did not want to be identified said teenagers should be home in bed, not on the street at 12:30 in the morning.
“Kids should be inside at that time of night,” the neighbor said. “That late at night, I mean schools the next morning and they should be getting ready to go to school.”