NEW ORLEANS — The attorney for the man accused of fatally shooting an innocent woman on Bourbon Street early Sunday morning says his client denies the accusations.
Public defender Leon Roche said Louis Barnes, 37, has said he did not fire the gun as police claim, according to The New Orleans Advocate.
The comments were briefly made during an unrelated bond hearing for Barnes who failed to re-new as a sex offender. He was found guilty in 2015 of having sex with a 15-year-old girl in Jefferson Parish and sentenced to two years in prison.
In the newest case, Barnes was booked Sunday with a count of second-degree murder in the death of 36-year-old Julie Couvillon and attempted second-degree murder of the security guard working at Willie’s Chicken Shack in the 400 block of Bourbon when the shooting happened about 3:15 a.m. Sunday.
In a warrant for his arrest, police wrote that Barnes grabbed the guard’s gun and chased him into and then out of the restaurant.
While the warrant says police reviewed city surveillance video and saw Couvillon and the guard fall, it appears that it does not explicitly show who fired the gun.
A spokeswoman for the store’s owner said Barnes was being removed from the store after he was trying to sell drugs in it. But the spokeswoman also said there is no video from inside since the internet was down at the time and feeds from the security cameras could not be sent.
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Barnes remained jailed Tuesday on a $1.5 million bond.