NEW ORLEANS — A two-month old baby was in the backseat of the car, when his mother was gunned down Saturday night in New Orleans East. The baby was unharmed.
“I thought he was dead, I thought he was shot,” Temera Anderson, the aunt of the woman shot, said about the baby.
According to NOPD, a 17 year-old boy was also killed. A 20-year-old and a 13-year-old were injured. NOPD believe the deaths and injuries stem from the same incident.
“It sounded like over a hundred shots,” Anderson said.
Police say the shooting happened in the 6000 block of Beechcraft Street. That’s where the 17-year-old was found. The woman, 31, was found a few blocks away on Downman Rd. Police believe she traveled the roughly two-minute drive, after she was shot in the car.
Neighbors and family identified her to WWLTV as Ronnisha Anderson.
“She didn’t deserve that, she ain’t never did anything to nobody. She was not a troublemaker, she don’t go around fighting. She looks out for everybody,” Temera Anderson said.
Ronnisha is now at least the fifth mother shot in the past five weeks. She’s the third woman shot in recent weeks while a small child was present, and at least 11 women have been fatally shot in New Orleans this year.
“It’s never been like this, this high in killing children and women,” Kiesha Keller, CEO of Esther’s Haven House, said.
Keller says she’s seeing more instances of domestic violence, something she believes adds to the rampant killings of women.
“A lot of the woman are being killed because of domestic violence situation and because of the public not knowing that domestic violence is on the rise again and it’s high,” Keller said.
Councilmember Helena Moreno echoed Keller’s sentiments on Facebook regarding Saturday night’s killing. In part, Moreno called for harsher punishments of domestic violence offenders. She believes, it will not only help families feel safer, but it will also make our city less violent as a whole.