NEW ORLEANS -- New Orleans Police now say eight people were shot on Canal Street on Saturday night when someone opened fire to settle a score.
A 17-year-old who was shot in the torso was the man police said the shooter intended to hit, but seven bystanders got in the way.
It's an example of brazen violence that seems to be consuming the city's streets.
“I saw a shadow of a man with a gun, and he's like 'pow, pow', just walking and just shooting,” said Anel Vasquez, who was working at a nearby store when shots rang out Saturday night.
According to police, one man handed a gun to another and he opened fire at the intersection of Canal and Royal streets, just as French Quarter Festival was wrapping up nearby.
"We've had approximately 50 police officers just on the Canal Street area for traffic control and for visibility, and for something like this to happen, regardless of the number of police officers, it's a challenging situation for law enforcement," said Deputy NOPD Superintendent Marlon Defillo on Saturday night.
The shooters opened fire surrounded by businesses that could have had surveillance cameras, not to mention a city crime camera, but police said none of the videos have resulted in anything useable for their investigation.
Investigators said they believe the intended target was a 17-year-old shot in the torso, and that it was to settle a beef between he and the shooter that started in the same spot during Mardi Gras.
But as of Monday afternoon, police hadn't named any suspects.
“In order to instill fear, you have to have the great possibility that you're gonna get caught when you do something. The absence of that, people will take their chances,” said Southern University Criminologist John Penny.
Penny has studied New Orleans’ crime problem for more than a decade, and is now a member of Mayor-elect Mitch Landrieu’s Criminal Justice Task Force.
“It's not un-solveable, but it's almost insurmountable in that we cannot fragmentedly deal with the problem. We're going to have to collectively come together and decide where are we going to put our resources,” Penny said.
Melissa Sawyer is also on the task force. She runs the Youth Empowerment Project, aimed at helping young people up to age 25.
“Desperate people do desperate things. I think that when people don't value their own life and don't understand that they have options or opportunities, people then stop caring and they do extremely hurtful, harmful things,” Sawyer said.
According to a Landrieu spokesman, the task force gathered at a closed door meeting at Tulane Law School all afternoon Monday to meet with federal officials and come up with a plan on how to coordinate resources better in the city's crime fight.
Even though both experts we talked to said the conversation is one the city keeps on having, they said the economy and the lack of opportunity right now are making the situation worse.
“The sort of hopeless that I'm seeing now and the sort of desperation in some of the kids and their families now is greater than it was. I think people are feeling the economic crunch. I think people are tired,” Sawyer said.
Mayor-elect Landrieu has only released broad priorities in the crime fight, no specifics yet. He has said two of his priorities are to revamp the New Orleans Recreation Department to give kids something positive to be involved in, and to invest in the juvenile justice system to intervene with young people.
