Wife of shot carjacking victim says Cantrell called her; asks mayor to show up in court

NEW ORLEANS (WVUE) - Mayor LaToya Cantrell said she was open to speaking with more victims at a press conference Wednesday, and it appears she started acting on that vow, calling the frustrated wife of a man shot and carjacked Uptown in mid-July after calls for action.

Scott Toups has been in the ICU fighting for his life, in and out of consciousness for more than a month. Police blamed the incident on a Bridge City escapee, 17-year-old Kendall Myles.

Since then, Stacie Toups has been by her husband’s bed side. On Thursday, she says she finally got a call from Cantrell, who reiterated her support for crime victims.

“Victims matter, and they need support and they need resources as well,” Cantrell said Wednesday.

“There’s not going to be any comfort. My life will never be the same, my husband’s life certainly will never be the same, nor will anyone’s lives who he touched,” said Stacie Toups.

Toups said she had to hunt down Cantrell at the mayor’s office and requested the call.

“Based on her behavior last week, I wanted to know if she had decided, should the time come, if she was going to support the perpetrator in my husband’s crime, or the victim, being me and him and the rest of our family,” Toups said.

When they talked, Toups said she invited the Mayor to Myles’ future court appearances to show her support.

“Can I count on the support of the mayor of my city, of Orleans Parish, where this crime happened on her watch, can I count on [her] personally to physically be in the courtroom?” Toups said she asked.

While she didn’t receive a firm answer, she plans to keep pushing.

Orleans District Attorney Jason Williams confirmed his intentions to try Myles in adult court for the shooting and carjacking. Myles is already serving juvenile life for other crimes, meaning he will be in jail at least until the age of 21.

“The citizens of New Orleans have to stop isolating on whether or not they should call her out of office or not. It’s time,” said formerly incarcerated anti-crime activist Ameer Baraka.

Baraka said after watching Wednesday’s press conference, he was outraged when Mayor Cantrell defended her decision to go to juvenile court to support a young offender. The victims, who were reading their impact statements at the time, called the incident a “slap in the face.”

“What about those women who will be traumatized for years to come? What about those people? I want to support those people, those are the people that I want to support, right? Those people are important. We can’t just delete them. We can’t just write them off as non-entities. They are important,” Baraka said. “I think she, again, does not have the capacity to empathize with those people.”

“That young person doing exactly what the judge said that he needed to do, I felt that it was very important for me to support that positive behavior so that that young person stays on the path of making better choices,” Cantrell said on Wednesday.

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