NEW ORLEANS — One suspect is in custody in the fatal double shooting along the I-10 Service Road on Feb. 20 that took the life of a 35-year Uber Driver and his passenger, a 21-year-old who appears to have been the intended target, police said.
And NOPD Homicide Commander Capt. Kevin Burns Jr. said in a press briefing Wednesday that detectives are looking for as many as three additional gunmen.
“We're still looking to identify three individuals that are tied to this investigation,” Burns said.
The man arrested Wednesday at daybreak, Tyree Quinn, 33, was free on bail and awaiting trial at the time that musician and part-time Uber Driver Andrew Stiller was fatally shot along with his passenger Johnell Hampton, a student at SUNO.
As the shots rang out, Stiller’s car then plowed through a fence along I-10 and rammed a second car with at least three people inside, one of whom suffered a critical gunshot wound and two others with severe injuries from the crash.
The shooting victim in the second car remains in the hospital after being shot in the head, multiple sources said.
The collective mayhem in the attack led New Orleans police to treat the case as a top priority, tracking Quinn’s movements and treating him as one of the city’s most wanted suspects. Burns said he was arrested by the Violent Offenders Warrant Squad with help from the U.S. Marshals Service.
“It's senseless. Barbaric. I've never seen anything like that in my 20 plus years on the job,” Burns said.
Quinn was booked with two counts of murder, three counts of attempted murder, illegal possession of a stolen car and unauthorized use of a motor vehicle, court records show.
Quinn’s long criminal rap sheet and earlier pending charges made him easy to track because the bail bond company that covered his $250,000 bail placed him on electronic monitoring through an ankle bracelet.
“He was wearing an ankle monitor and it absolutely aided in this investigation with his apprehension,” Burns said.
Quinn is awaiting trial on charges from November 2022 that include armed robbery with a firearm, being a felon with a firearm, possession of a stolen car and hit-and-run driving. Those pending charges came shortly after Quinn was released from prison after he was sentenced to five years after pleading guilty in 2018 to drug and weapons charges.
His long criminal history left Stiller’s widow, Melissa, wondering how he was free on bail at all.
“I understand innocent until proven guilty,” she said. “But when you've been proven guilty time and time again, you can just buy your way out? Money, money, money. Just buy your way out?”
The ability to electronically pinpoint Quinn’s whereabouts, virtually minute-by-minute, apparently played a role in placing him at the scene of the I-10 Service Road and Bundy Road shooting and helping detectives track his movements afterward.
New Orleans police have not identified a motive in the shooting, but Burns did say Hampton appears to have been the target. Hampton himself was free on bail at the time of the shooting, awaiting trial for accessory to attempted second-degree murder from a brutal attack in the French Quarter in January 2022.
Hampton’s criminal defense attorney, Michael Idoyaga, said his client was not only innocent, he was fearful of being involved in the criminal case after first being approached by police as a witness.
“I was never under the impression that he was guilty of anything,” Michael Idoyaga said.
The first in his family to attend college, Hampton felt as if a dark cloud hovered over him as he tried to keep his student life on track, his attorney said.
“He was nervous,” Idoyaga said. “Because he didn't want to be considered for criminal prosecution and sentencing together with all these other people who for all we know actually were criminals.”
Police connected Hampton to the January 2022 French Quarter shooting along with three other defendants. But Idoyaga says his client was just a bystander and court records show that police pegged him as an accomplice, identifying two other men as being the instigators and triggermen.
He said Hampton and his family were puzzled when police arrested him, first for obstruction of justice, then later on the upgraded accessory charge.
“He was at best a witness and just didn't want to be involved at all,” Idoyaga said. “He belonged to the school culture as opposed to the street culture.”
Police said they have not yet developed a motive in the double murder, but Melissa Stiller said that hardly matters as she is left without a husband and father to her three teen-aged children.
Andrew was a talented musician who drove Uber for extra money. That fatal ride on Feb. 20 was his first of the night, she said.
“Had he waited 30 minutes more to leave, he wouldn't have been there,” she said. “And there's nothing we can do to rewind time. But God I wish I could.”