NEW ORLEANS — By all accounts, number 70 was a powerful presence in the room. Brittany Stevenson, a football player who played first for the New Orleans Hippies, and then for the Hurricanes, was killed Tuesday.
“Wasn’t a trouble maker, she was the life of the party, you know. To lose her life at 26, you know,” said Rodney Smith, her coach at the New Orleans Hurricanes.
Stevenson was shot multiple times while in her car in the 6000 block of Music Street in Gentilly.
Smith celebrated Thanksgiving with her a few weeks ago.
“Well, the team is taking it very hard. Because we are a close family. We do a lot together. We do community service together. We work in the superdome together to raise money for our team. It’s just sad, really sad,” he said.
Stevenson leaves behind a young daughter. Her teammates and former coaches gathered at the Milne Rec Center on Friday night to remember her.
“We’re a family in this women’s football thing here in New Orleans. So it hurt and it really touched a lot of people’s lives because it could have been them,” said Curtis Greene. Green is the owner of the New Orleans Hippies football team, and knew Stevenson for years
New Orleans has seen more than 170 homicides this year, and an alarming number of victims have been women.
Smith says Stevenson was the second woman on his team to be murdered this year.
And just twelve days prior to Stevenson’s death, a woman was shot multiple times in her car on the West Bank Expressway.
“I don’t think what happened to her, she deserved that at all. And there’s been a great deal, a number of killings of women in this city so we want to try to make awareness to that,” said Greene.
The Hippies are now offering a 25-hundred dollar reward for information.
And Stevenson’s family has set up a GoFundMe page to raise the money for a proper burial.
No arrests have been made in this case. If you have information, call Crimestoppers.
