STATEMENT FROM
THE ORIGINAL BIG 7
SOCIAL AID AND PLEASURE CLUB
on MOTHER’S DAY
SECOND LINE SHOOTING
The Original Big 7 Social Aid and Pleasure Club community is deeply saddened by the foolish violence that took place during our annual Mother’s Day’s Parade today. Our hearts and prayers go out to all of the victims of this tragedy and their families. We are with you in your struggle for health, wellness, and justice.
Crime and violence in New Orleans is a systemic problem and we strongly believe that safeguarding our cultural heritage helps to address the roots of violence. We are a cross-generational organization, ages 5-70. Our young people grow up in this culture, are fed by it, and feel loved, supported and connected in ways that build real security. That’s crime prevention.
Today’s violence is an outrage to what the Original Big 7 and all of New Orleans secondlining culture represents. Secondlining is about community and celebration, not trauma and violence. Today’s shooting was in no way a product of secondline culture or somehow set in motion by the parade or its route, as some critics may suggest. Our parade brings together different folks from across the city—black, white, latino, the young and the old, and lots of families–to celebrate the best of New Orleans. We feel embarrassed that the world is now viewing our city and our community through a lens of violence. We support a thorough investigation of the shooting and pray the perpetrators will be brought to justice.
In the seventeen years that the Big 7 has been organizing parades and since the first Original Big 7 Mother’s Day Parade in 2001, this is the first act of shooting violence that has occurred, and we pray that it is the last.
Please check our facebook pages for updates and information about upcoming benefits and events: https://www.facebook.com/
We host our parade on Mother’s Day to give something back to the women of the world. We are a family, a secondlining family, and we will not let this foolish act disrupt the positive work we are doing in our community.
Date: May 12, 2013
Media Contact: 504-616-1888
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One of the NSP big supporters, Deborah Cotton, among those wounded today- during the Big 7 Mothers’ Day Parade. Thoughts and prayers with all of those wounded today, and to the whole city, hurting tonight. Sending love.
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19 wounded in New Orleans
Mother’s Day parade shooting
Published time: May 12, 2013 20:16
Edited time: May 13, 2013 03:12
Almost two dozen people including two 10-year-old children have been injured after as many as three gunmen opened fire at a ‘second line’ of a parade on Mother’s Day in New Orleans. Three people remain in critical condition following the shootout.
Over 300 people were participating in the residential festival, on Frenchmen Street, in the east of the city, when several shots were fired. The incident occurred around 2pm local time (19:00 GMT) on Sunday.
“We have mothers, sisters, little children who were shot,” New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu told local press.
Nine people were immediately taken to University Hospital by emergency responders, eight of whom were suffering from gunshot wounds, according to local channel WWLTV. One more being treated was injured in an attempt to escape from the shooting.
A New Orleans doctor confirmed to reporters that he has had to treat ‘severe injuries’ including wounds to the chest and abdomen.
Further victims were taken to different hospitals in the region.
The majority of the injuries are not considered life-threatening, and no fatalities have been confirmed, but three are reportedly in a critical condition.
Watch the video capturing the moment shots were fired at a New Orleans parade (WARNING: GRAPHIC LANGUAGE)
Police confirmed the overall number of casualties stood at 19, and the injured included two 10 year old children, one boy and one girl, who was grazed on her side by a bullet.
“There was a 10-year-old girl we believe who suffered a graze wound, and she is in good condition and under care. Three to four people are in surgery right now, and we have no indication of what their condition is, but we also have no indications at this time that anyone will perish from today’s events,”New Orleans Police Department Superintendent Ronald Serpas told local station WDSU.
“The shots just started ringing out, and everybody just started running, and the next thing I heard, 10-15 people got shot,” one witness told the channel.
‘Scariest thing I’ve ever seen’
Anthony Reed, a Louisiana State University sociologist was visiting New Orleans from Baton Rouge with his friends. They were dancing in the middle of the crowd when the parade turned into the Frenchman area.
“Then we heard pop pop…,” Reed said in an email to RT. “Not many people reacted to the first ones, but then people all around me fell. Others started running. I ran to get behind a police state trooper vehicle and on the way the baby stroller tipped over. I stopped real quick to pick it up and give it back to the mother… Didn’t get her name or anything, I was running out of pure fear.”
He stayed near the police vehicle for a little while before realizing his friends weren’t around, and then went back to find them. “I was relieved to see them safely standing there,” he said. “We all walked over to the bike shop, kind of shaking and scared, and just sat there for a while and called our mothers.”
“Scariest thing I’ve ever seen,” he concluded.
Police believe three suspects were responsible for the gunfire, who were seen fleeing towards Claiborne Avenue. A door-to-door search is being conducted in the hopes of tracing one or more of them.
NOPD’s Serpas described the appearance of one of the suspects involved.
“One of the suspects’ descriptions would be a dark-skinned male, 18 to 22 years old, short hair and wearing a white shirt and blue jean shorts,” he said, going on to announce that the shots may have rang out from “maybe two different types of weapons.”
Gang-related violence
The FBI confirmed that it believed the shooting to have been street violence-related, rather than a terrorist act. Former CIA agent Glenn Carle reaffirmed this belief, telling RT that the violence didn’t seem to bear any terrorist trademarks.
“It doesn’t have any of the hallmarks or modus operandi of terrorist groups that I ever worked against, that we know about in the intelligence community in the United States. It seems –knowing nothing more than the media reports – to have been either astoundingly amateurish by a terrorist – and I don’t think that’s the case, or more likely a gang-related kind of violent act,” he said.
New Orleans has one of the highest violent crime rates in the US. A week ago, police were also called out to investigate a triple shooting near the corner of Frenchman street.
“One of the terrible problems in American society, certainly, is the pervasiveness of guns and then of violence -there’s much more gun violence in the US than other societies. As I understand it, there were 10 policemen spread throughout the crowd…so the police presence seems to have been quite conscious…addressing gun violence as a big issue in the United States,” said Carle.
Crowdsourced investigation
Police and local media have appealed for anyone with information on the incident to contact crime stoppers in the hope of tracing the gunman, or gunmen.
An initial $2,500 cash reward was initially offered, which was later raised to $10,000 amid the massive manhunt for parade shooting suspects. The money is offered to anyone who can provide information that will help track down and arrest the suspects.
In the same way investigators of the Boston Marathon Bombings appealed for crowdsourced photographs, police have urged anyone with any images from the ‘second line’ of the parade to step forward.
The ‘second line’ is the crowd of parade goers which follows the official participants. NOPD Superintendent Ronald Serpas told the New Orleans Times-Picayune that there may have been up to 400 people in it, with some 200 in the area of the shooting at the time.
>via: http://rt.com/usa/new-orleans-parade-shooting-179/