NEW ORLEANS — Tuesday, two women were shot both had children in the car.
Just before 8 p.m., New Orleans Police Department received reports of a shooting where a woman was shot in the upper body while driving in her car with two children in the area of North Robertson and St. Ferdinand Streets on Tuesday night.
That was the second time in the same day a woman was shot. Just before 1 p.m. a shooting in New Orleans killed a young woman. Her toddler is now without a mother.
A young woman was gunned down steps from her house, her two-year-old in the backseat at the time witnessed the whole thing.
Her father, Lionel Simmons spoke to Eyewitness News on the phone just hours after losing his daughter.
"We're not coping, we're just existing right now," he said "She was a fabulous young woman, a wonderful mother to her child and she had her whole life in front of her."
33-Year-old Sully Simmons had her whole life ahead of her, and a son to raise, her father said.
A witness says he saw the shooter do a U-turn at N Broad and Orleans Avenue and then shot at Sully's car which was parked out the front of this blue house.
"What I saw was a car drive by and shoot somebody in the vehicle and a little girl or boy I think it was sitting in the back seat and just someone getting killed outside of the store, very tragic, very. It's sad to see something like this happen around here," Yousif Elhindi said.
New Orleans Police say the shooting happened just before 1 p.m. Our video shows eight bullets were fired into the car. One of those bullets possibly hit the back, passenger side window, where the two-year-old was sitting. The toddler miraculously was not harmed.
NOPD said during a press conference: "Upon arriving on scene officers found a female in a vehicle shot multiple times, the female was transported to New Orleans EMS hospital where she unfortunately succumbed to her injuries."
Video circulating on social media shows the aftermath of the shooting, it was too graphic for us to show.
Simmons says it's the second time tragedy has struck his family. Eyewitness News reporter Eleanor Tabone said during an interview with Simmons: "You have lost two daughters to gun violence."
He responded with: "Two daughters, exactly."
In 2008, his 20-year-old daughter Kody Simmons lost her life to gun violence. Tuesday was Kody's birthday. Tuesday morning Sully visited her sister's gravesite, to pay tribute. Hours later, her life was also taken.
Lionel finished his interview with this last thing: "Leave town, that's what I wished she would've done."
If you have any information, you're urged to contact the NOPD homicide unit or Crime stoppers.
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