At least 10 people were shot in a mass shooting in New Orleans on Sunday, NPR reported. The shooting occurred near NOLA’s French Quarter in the early morning, just hours after a major college football game, according to the Washington Examiner.
Not much else was known about the shooting as of Monday, and no arrests have been made.
Nearly a dozen shot
The shooting occurred on the bustling thoroughfare of Canal Street around 3:30 a.m. not far from the corner of famous Bourbon Street, the heart of the city’s historic downtown. Crowds of tourists were still milling about in the after-hours of an annual college football game, the Bayou Classic — also known as the “Bayou Bowl” — between Grambling State and Southern University, which was played at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome.
City police responded immediately because they had beefed up security in the French Quarter for the game, police superintendent Shaun Ferguson said. Officers were so close to the scene that they heard the gunshots ring out, and initially thought they were the ones being fired upon.
Hours after the shooting, police said as many as 11 had been injured, but on Sunday, they revised that count back to 10, according to NPR. Two people suffered critical injuries, and no police officers were hurt.
Witnesses of the shooting and surveillance images portrayed a chaotic scene of revelers scrambling to safety. A CVS employee on Canal Street said that a crowd began pouring into the store, the city’s Times-Picayune reported.
“I heard three rounds, and people started running,” the employee said.
No arrests made
As of Monday, police had identified no suspects nor a motive, according to a local CBS affiliate. A person of interest was detained, but they are not a suspect.
The city’s mayor, LaToya Cantrell, tweeted in solidarity of the victims Sunday, writing that gun violence “never creates solutions — only innocent victims and trauma.”
This is the second mass shooting to strike the French Quarter after the Bayou Bowl in recent years. In 2016, an argument between two men escalated into a shooting that injured nine and killed one.
While revered for its lively culture, New Orleans is infamous for its high crime rates. While the murder rate has dropped in recent years, New Orleans is still considered among the deadliest of major U.S. cities, according to U.S. News & World Report, along with places like Baltimore and St. Louis.
Another shooting in a separate part of downtown killed two and injured two others after the Canal Street shooting, according to USA Today. It’s not yet clear if the two attacks are related.
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