Surveillance video captures afternoon shootout in St. Roch

NEW ORLEANS (WVUE) - Surveillance video shows three young people walk down the 1600 block of Marigny Street in St. Roch watching as a car passes by, then within seconds, bullets start flying ricocheting off of everything.

The three people duck behind parked vehicles. New Orleans police say the video shows the group return fire.

All of it happened Tuesday afternoon, a block away from the busy intersection of Claiborne and Elysian Fields.

“It looks like, it looks like a war,” said Justin Brown, a former NOPD officer who now works as a criminal justice consultant. “Those gunshots could have gone anywhere. Those bullets, those bullets don’t have a name on it.”

Brown says the entire street is at the mercy of the shooters, who are, pointing aimlessly.

“That [bullet] could have went into somebody’s house,” Brown said. “A kid could have been playing, somebody could have been going to the mailbox at the time all of this happened, luckily, it didn’t happen.”

Dillard University professor and criminologist Ashraf Esmail, Ph.D. says these criminals are bold and reckless.

“The question becomes is this not calculated anymore,” Esmail asks. “Are they not caring? Or is it because they feel like it’s a lack of officers, they don’t believe in getting caught? Or they just don’t care about any of that stuff they’re just reacting to right now to what’s going on.”

Esmail says broad daylight shootings is a trend he’s seeing across the country, “you’re seeing more of this not only in New Orleans, but a lot written about this in Boston, Chicago, Oakland.”

It’s a trend Brown says needs to end, “we have to figure out something and quick.”

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