NEW ORLEANS — Friday – New Orleans police arrested Lostin Lee in connection with the shooting death of a woman in the 3800 block of General Taylor in the Broadmoor neighborhood.
She was also 34 years old.
According to police, Lee initially reported the shooting, was detained, transported to a police station for questioning, and later taken into custody.
The murder happened Thursday night around 9:40 p.m., down the street from former New Orleans City Councilman Jim Singleton’s home.
"It’s totally frustrating. The whole concept of what’s going on around nowadays is frustrating," Singleton said.
Around the same time Lee was being arrested, city leaders and University Medical Center ER doctors gathered in front of city hall, marking National Gun Violence Awareness Day.
Homicide is the seventh leading cause of death in New Orleans and the fourth leading cause for black men.
“This is a true public health crisis in New Orleans, and it has been so for a very long time,” City Health Department Director Dr. Jennifer Avegno said.
Doctors who work in the UMC trauma center know the impacts of gun violence all too well.
“As an ER doctor at University, I see way more than I ever wanted to, the devastation affecting our community,” said Dr. Annelies DeWulf, an LSU Emergency Medicine physician at UMC. “I see it in our individuals, our patients, their families being torn apart, and our community being torn apart.”
“It’s absolutely shocking what a bullet can do to a human body,” said Dr. Sharvin Taghavi, a Tulane trauma surgeon at UMC. “It can shred entire organs and essentially destroy a human body.”
Back in Broadmoor, for the first time in Jim Singleton’s long life in and out of politics, he says he doesn’t know what to do to fix a problem weighing so heavy on the city.
“I don’t know how to solve the problem and it frustrates me when you don’t have an answer as to how you can resolve something that is going on around you. Now it hits me on my own block. That’s even worse.”
Police have not released a motive for the killing.
The City of New Orleans is now working with UMC to expand its trauma recovery services and hospital-based violence intervention program.
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