NEW ORLEANS (WVUE) - Not six weeks into the new year and New Orleans police have investigated three mass shootings.
Expand that timeframe by one month, and New Orleans has seen five mass shootings since the beginning of last December.
The city’s latest mass gun violence incident happened Wednesday night (Feb. 8) in New Orleans East near the intersection of Chef Menteur Highway and Bullard Avenue.
Details remain limited, but in a press release, police say an unknown number of gunmen opened fire on a vehicle at the intersection, killing two people and wounding three more, including two young boys, ages 3 and 8.
Both New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell and Interim Superintendent of Police Michelle Woodfork appeared at a Mardi Gras public safety press conference the following day but could not provide any additional information, citing the ongoing investigation.
The first two mass shootings of the year happened two days apart in early January.
On Tues., Jan. 3, four men were shot in Central City on South Rocheblave Street.
Two days later, two people were killed and another three were injured on Thurs., Jan. 5, in Central City near the intersection of St. Andrew Street and Rev. John Raphael Jr. Way.
Only a few days prior, on December 26, two 19-year-olds were killed and four others were wounded overnight in a Lower 9th Ward mass shooting at a Christmas party.
Weeks before that, on Dec. 8, four people were shot at a Dollar Tree on Chef Mentuer Highway at the edge of Gentilly, including two shoppers.
There have been 98 people shot in New Orleans since the beginning of the year. Nearly a third of those victims have died.
By this time last year, there were 95 victims of gun violence. In 2022, New Orleans saw the most murders in a single year since 1996.
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