NEW ORLEANS — City leaders are reacting to an apparent murder-suicide that happened in the Leonidas neighborhood Saturday morning.
Police say a man and woman were found dead in a home on Monroe Street around 8 a.m., but family members of the victims tell WWL Louisiana that they knew about the situation much sooner than that.
The family member we spoke to did not wish to be identified. She said she received a call from another family member around 6:30 a.m. Saturday, telling her to get to Monroe Street.
“That’s what we thought it was, a hostage situation," she said.
It was much worse. She said that they walked in to find her loved one and her loved one's husband dead.
“This around 7:13. No police came out. They’ve been called numerous times since 4 a.m.," she said.
We searched the Orleans Parish Communication District's calls for service data. It shows at least three calls were made to the same Monroe Street address early Saturday morning.
An 'aggravated battery domestic' call came in at 6:51 a.m. and police were not dispatched until about an hour later, according to the data.
NOPD Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick said the Orleans Parish Coroner would confirm the cause of death but that it appears to be a murder-suicide.
“This is a domestic violence situation," Kirkpatrick said at a press conference on Saturday evening.
The family member said the man and woman were married.
"It's something that's been going on but not like this," the victim's family member said.
Kirkpatrick claims an officer did try to go into the house after an earlier call was made, but she said she could not give further details on Saturday.
NOPD says they are opening an investigation into the issue, starting from when the call was made to when officers responded.
“We’re going to look at the whole thing," Kirkpatrick said.
On Sunday, Council President Helena Moreno released a statement saying the investigation is 'warranted.'
Moreno demanded that domestic violence be 'recognized as the urgent, severe and dangerous situation that it is.'
When Kirkpatrick was asked on Saturday if this was failure of the NOPD or the 911 call center, Kirkpatrick said 911 is not part of the police department and that it's a separate entity that relays information to each other.
Upon a WWL Louisiana request over the weekend, the OPCD did confirm the comment of NOPD Deputy Superintendent Ganthier that the department has not identified any issues on our part (911), but the investigation continues.
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