NEW ORLEANS — New Orleans Police say the shooting of a 15-year-old Warren Easton High School student was an accident, and a suspect has been arrested in connection with the incident.
His fellow classmates are now coming to terms with losing two students in just weeks of each other.
Warren Easton 9th grader Amariyah Harris says she met Tyler Ellis at lunch one day and they just hit it off.
"He called me Myla, it stuck on me, he was the only person I let call me that,” Harris said. “It's still shocking, I am still in the moment of processing the situation right now, we going to miss Tyler.”
Ellis was a young athlete who was a member of a football team and on the honor roll. Less than 24 hours after he was shot, Harris is trying to come to terms with his death.
"It's shocking because you never know who’s next, and the fact that he’s just grieving about the loss of our friend Kennedi, it's just devastating,” Harris said.
At the end of January, Kennedi Belton, a freshman at Warren Easton High School, was attending a girls’ sleepover when she was shot while lying in bed.
Detectives say the suspect was “playing with a gun” that belonged to a friend in the next room when it accidentally discharged.
“You never know. Somebody you're close to, that might be the last moments with them,” Harris said.
Police say just before 9 p.m. they got the call about the shooting, which happened at the 3000 Block of St Roch Avenue.
Councilman Eugene Green is pleading with people to put the guns down,
“A young man who was a good student and also an athlete…his family are suffering right now…a young person who is already contributing so much to society is gone,” Green said.
The NOPD said they have arrested a juvenile suspect after determining the incident was accidental in nature.