Several shot along Mardi Gras route

**TXCharlie** · 02-24-09, 03:57 PM

Hope Mavriktu is ok...

Cops: Several shot along Mardi Gras route - Crime & courts- msnbc.com

Two suspects in custody; injuries considered not life threatening

BREAKING NEWS
updated 3 minutes ago

NEW ORLEANS - Several people have been shot along a Mardi Gras parade route and two suspects were taken into custody, police said.

Police spokesman Bob Young said the gunfire erupted about 1:40 p.m. Tuesday during a truck float parade. Authorities don't believe the injuries were life threatening.

The victims were taken to local hospitals. No other information was immediately available.

**bluelightem** · 02-24-09, 04:26 PM

That is why nothing good happens at Margi Gras. Welllll....

**lewisipso** · 02-24-09, 05:15 PM

*sigh* I fu@king HATE Mardi Gras.

**kjlaw** · 02-24-09, 05:27 PM

Shooting spree injures six on St. Charles Avenue parade route

by staff and wire reports Tuesday February 24, 2009, 1:46 PM

Rhonda Nabonne / The Times-PicayuneEmergency personnel prepare a man for transport by ambulance to a local hospital after a shooting on St. Charles Avenue near 2nd Street as a truck parade passed by Tuesday.
Six people, including a baby, were injured this afternoon after a shooting spree broke out along the St. Charles Avenue parade route near Second Street, according to the New Orleans Police Department.
The shootings happened about 1:40 p.m. after the last major parade of the celebration, Rex, had ended. Hundreds of truck floats that follow the parade were passing when gunfire broke out.
"It sounded like a string of fireworks, so I knew it was more than one shooter," said Toni Labat, 29, a window company manager. She was with her two children, a 2-year-old boy and a 10-year-old girl.
"Everybody was petrified. They hit the ground, the floats stopped, everybody on the floats ducked," Labat said.
Labat said one man dragged himself on the ground screaming for help after being wounded and another man was gasping for air and bleeding from his mouth.
Of the six victims, two are listed in serious condition. They are both men around 20 who were shot in the abdomen, according to Jeb Tate with New Orleans EMS.
The four others are listed in stable condition. They include a 1-year-old boy with a graze wound to the back; a 17-year-old girl shot in the thigh; a 50-year-old woman shot in the elbow, and and 30-year-old man with a graze wound to the thigh. All appeared to be innocent bystanders in the area for the day's Carnival parades, said NOPD Deputy Chief Kirk Bouyelas.
Dr. Jim Parry, 41, a surgeon who was with a gathering of doctors near the shooting site, ran over to tend to one man who he said had been shot in the abdomen. "He kept asking me, 'Was I shot? Was I shot?'"
Paramedics arrived and took over for the Air Force reservist.
"I'm off to Afghanistan this summer. Damn, this is more dangerous than Afghanistan," Parry said.

Rhonda Nabonne / The Times-PicayuneA New Orleans police officer talks to a candy vendor shot on St. Charles Avenue near 2nd Street Tuesday.
Two male suspects were arrested shortly after the shooting, when police officers on parade duty heard the gunshots and chased them on foot. They were apprehended at Carondelet and Second streets, where officers found them carrying three guns, Bouyelas said.
"The important thing to note is that the officers were here at the scene and quick to respond," he said.
The violence along the oak-lined Uptown streetcar line marred what had been a generally peaceful day of revelry in which hundreds of thousands of people partied in the streets on the final day of Carnival. Another shooting was reported on Friday night after an argument, but otherwise, the event was generally problem-free.
Uptown resident Beau Beals, 45, a resident of Uptown, was outside a house party sitting on the lake side of St. Charles when the shooting happened.
He said he saw a group of young men in front of the Hedgewood Surgical Center at 2427 St. Charles, facing the crowd on the neutral ground. That's when he heard about nine pops and saw smoke, then noticed a man lying in the street.
Upon hearing all the commotion, NOPD officer Sabrina Richardson, who was working a private detail at the party Beal was attending, pushed some of the people inside of the house and bolted outdoors to tend to the wounded. He said he and other revelers tossed children over a metal fence to get them to safety, but others kept waiting for beads and other trinkets being tossed from the floats as if nothing had happened.
"There was an ambulance that was picking up a guy off the street and people didn't even stop vying for throws," Beal said.

Shooting spree injures six on St. Charles Avenue parade route - Breaking News from New Orleans - Times-Picayune - NOLA.com

**bluelightem** · 02-24-09, 05:46 PM

Originally Posted by lewisipso

*sigh* I fu@king HATE Mardi Gras.

Ha ooooh well I feel your pain then, being that you are a police officer there. Actually I wouldn't know how much that sucks during Mardi Gras, but I can only imagine.

**Buttercup** · 02-24-09, 07:54 PM

Originally Posted by lewisipso

*sigh* I fu@king HATE Mardi Gras.

That must be a nightmare. Is there usually random "celebratory" shooting during Mardi Gras, kind of like the random shootings that occur in cities like Detroit and Chicago on New Year's Eve?

**2 Blue 4 U** · 02-24-09, 08:05 PM

Like the West Indian Day Parade, after a while and enough drinks even the good folk start acting like Animules and drunken fools. I always called that parade a roving riot, nothing but insane chaos, flat bed tractor trailors filled with speakers and people dancing in costumes, throwing powder (fairy dust). I think the night before is even worse, the J'ouvert. May be worse then Mardi Gras, less touristy, more animalistic (actually animals don't even behave like some) Sure am glad to not have to work that any more!

Be safe!

**pgg** · 02-24-09, 08:27 PM

Originally Posted by bluelightem

That is why nothing good happens at Margi Gras. Welllll....

I know one good thing that comes from it. BOOBS

**bluelightem** · 02-24-09, 09:26 PM

Originally Posted by pgg

I know one good thing that comes from it. BOOBS

Ha right-o

**Captain America** · 02-24-09, 09:44 PM

Originally Posted by lewisipso

*sigh* I fu@king HATE Mardi Gras.

+ 1,000,000

**Retdetsgt** · 02-24-09, 09:58 PM

Even up here, Fat Tuesday has become a problem. Tonight there will be lotsa cops on the street and lotsa people going to jail......

**armsmaster270** · 02-25-09, 01:41 AM

I can fondly remember Mardi Gras 66, 67, 68. But I wasn't a local cop then and Bourbon Street wasn't a bunch of T-Shirt shops, All bars and strip joints except for Preservation Hall.

**MacLean** · 02-25-09, 01:48 AM

Originally Posted by kjlaw

"I'm off to Afghanistan this summer. Damn, this is more dangerous than Afghanistan," Parry said.

Statistically, I bet he's right.

**TXCharlie** · 02-25-09, 02:28 AM

Like I said in Mav's thread, there's a reason I never got within 100 miles of Mardi Gras, even though I grew up in Louisiana and spent 20 years there.

Boobies are less trouble to obtain elsewhere

**Second Chance** · 02-25-09, 05:00 PM

Our Mardi Gras crap is nothing like the Hell NOPD deals with. I feel for them every year, like I always says, "you can't have nothing around here".

**Retdetsgt** · 02-25-09, 05:28 PM

Originally Posted by armsmaster270

I can fondly remember Mardi Gras 66, 67, 68. But I wasn't a local cop then and Bourbon Street wasn't a bunch of T-Shirt shops, All bars and strip joints except for Preservation Hall.

I was at Mardi Gras in 1965. You could still drive cars down Bourbon Street then. I don't recall seeing any violence, just a good time. But I was 20 years old and had a different mindset then. But then again, I think the world was a bit of a different place than it is now too. People just shot other people over wimmen and money, not dumbshit gang stuff.

**lewisipso** · 02-26-09, 01:40 AM

Originally Posted by bluelightem

Ha ooooh well I feel your pain then, being that you are a police officer there. Actually I wouldn't know how much that sucks during Mardi Gras, but I can only imagine.

I no longer work that area. I'm about 80 miles away now and have been for about 12 years. There hasn't been many places for Mardi Gras in the N.O. area I havent' been and it was ALL a pain in the ass. Especially the French Quarter. Our parades don't compare but they are still a pain in the ass and I still hate Mardi Gras.
Although I did learn a few things from working those parades. No matter what location a person is trying to get to it is 2 blocks up and take a left. There was no such thing as the jail was overcrowded. For God's sake don't touch an NOPD officers hat or horse. A piss and booze bath was when we threw a suspect down on Bourbon St. 3 officers and 1 horse can clear an entire block. NOPD is one of the best agencies at crowd control. There are no bathrooms available so that people can be charged with urinating in public. What can I say? It's a money making racket.

**Captain America** · 02-26-09, 01:48 AM

Booze , drugs, lack of brain cells , beads and guns = Mardi Gras

**lewisipso** · 02-26-09, 01:59 AM

Originally Posted by Buttercup

That must be a nightmare. Is there usually random "celebratory" shooting during Mardi Gras, kind of like the random shootings that occur in cities like Detroit and Chicago on New Year's Eve?

Not as a rule. This is more prevelant during New Years and the 4th of July. It does happen however.

**mavriktu** · 02-26-09, 07:33 AM

Like lewis my parade is a lot smaller,like lewis I cut my teeth on N.O. parades,I worked a suburb of N.O. and NOPD went on strike one year and ALL the parades came to our city.I was on a corner where the parade turned(considered prime space for revelers cause the parade has to go slow ,and they get more throws

) I was by myself,with an estimated crowd of 10,000

yeah baby,guess who sat on the hood of his unit and watched