Neighbors in Uptown stunned at video showing burglarizing teens toting high-powered rifles

NEW ORLEANS (WVUE) -At three in the morning, all should be quiet off Magazine Street when Enzo Sainato is getting ready for work.

“I hear a bunch of car alarms go off I look outside and a car speeding away that way down Patton,” said Sainato.

At first, that was all he saw, until his neighbors dug through their video surveillance to see what they missed.

“This is extra, extra though with respect to the types of guns the kids are apparently running around with,” said Sainato.

The video shows a couple of teenagers get out of a car and walk into the middle of the street and brazenly hold what appears to be a high-powered rifle into the air.

The two teens appear to be keeping watch, pacing in the middle of the intersection as a car’s headlights blink. They keep watching for a few more seconds until something causes them to run back to the car, more teens rounding the corner until they speed off.

Sainato says they found out the next morning, the teens were pulling on door handles.

“I immediately said call the police call the police call the police… the district here they need to know that’s what these kids are up to, it’s not like they’re going to catch those two kids, they might, unlikely, but they need to know who’s riding around here,” said Sainato.

Sainato, who’s a criminologist by trade says he’s thankful that night didn’t turn violent outside his door because he says it could have.

“This is one of the biggest problems that winds up kids getting killed is because they’re poor decision-making when confronted with law-enforcement… they’re more likely to shoot and flee than to say ‘ok I’m caught’ and put the gun down,” said Sainato.

Anecdotally, he says they’re seeing these kinds of incidents more and more uptown.

“What is it that’s going on, we’re getting to the point where kids are that interested in stealing usually pennies worth of stuff that they feel they also need to protect themselves with that kind of hardware and where the hell are they getting that kind of hardware quite frankly,” said Sainato.

He hopes neighbors continue to inform and help the NOPD police the neighborhood, otherwise, he fears something worse could happen.

“Your life is more valuable than the trinkets in your car that can be replaced. Life can’t,” said Sainato.

Neighbors did not report anything missing from their vehicles.

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