Mansour Mbodj is a man from New Orleans who has been charged with a murder that took place during the annual Bacchus festival. According to police reports Mansour Mbodj would allegedly open fire killing a teenager and injuring four others. Among the four shot and injured are a four-year-old girl, an 18-year-old man, a 22-year-old woman and a 24-year-old woman. Police believe that Mansour Mbodj was involved in an altercation with another person and gunfire would follow. Mansour Mbodj would be arrested at the scene with the gun in his hand.
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A shooting on a carnival parade route in New Orleans on Sunday night killed one man and wounded four other people, including a four-year-old girl, according to officials.
Authorities said they had arrested a man at the scene on a weapons charge, but they stopped short of calling him the shooter.
The shooting occurred about 9.30pm local time near St Charles Avenue and Terpsichore Street, in front of an eatery and “just steps” from revellers who had congregated to watch the annual parade staged by the Krewe of Bacchus, the New Orleans CBS affiliate WWL-TV reported.
Bacchus rolls annually on the Sunday before Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday, which in Christian cultures marks the last day before Lent.
A male thought to be between the ages of 15 and 18 was killed, the New Orleans police chief, Michelle Woodfork, said during a press briefing Monday. A four-year-old girl, an 18-year-old man, a 22-year-old woman and a 24-year-old woman were injured.
Woodfork called the shooting that marred the Bacchus parade “an isolated incident” that resulted from people having a conflict and at least one of them deciding that “the resolution … would be gunfire”.
Police officers arrested Mansour Mbodj, 21, at the scene of the shooting on a count of illegal carrying of a gun. But Woodfork said investigators had not immediately been able to determine exactly who fired and whether there was more than one shooter.
In court documents obtained by the Guardian, police said officers heard a dozen gunshots erupt at the corner of St Charles and Terpsichore before seeing Mansour Mbodj fleeing. Mbodj was looking back, they said, holding “an unknown object in his right hand”, when an officer successfully ordered him to get on the ground.
Officers said they saw Mansour Mbodj lying next to a black pistol and handcuffed him. He allegedly claimed that strangers were shooting at him and did not understand his constitutional rights before he was brought to jail to be booked, officers wrote in the records.
In Louisiana, illegal carrying of a gun is often a misdemeanor calling for up to six months in prison and a maximum fine of $500. But there are cases involving violence or prior convictions where those penalties can be enhanced.
In addition to the pistol spotted near Mansour Mbodj when he was detained, officers also recovered a second gun at the scene, Woodfork said.
One witness told WWL-TV that he heard at least a dozen shots ring out as attendees scrambled to flee the gunfire. Before the shooting, the witness said there were several confrontations around this same area that police intervened in.
“Everyone ran – everyone took cover,” Andrew Crawford told WWL-TV. “My whole family ducked. I kind of just hovered over my family, like the small children.”
New Orleans has seen gun violence at or near carnival festivities in prior years.
A 15-year-old girl died last year after being struck by a stray bullet several blocks from the Krewe of Endymion’s parade route on the Saturday before Mardi Gras, according to authorities.
Meanwhile, a man was shot dead during a parade on St Charles on Mardi Gras in 2018, less than a mile away from the spot where Sunday’s shooting occurred.
There was another mass shooting in Tennessee earlier on Sunday. One person was killed, and 10 others wounded early on Sunday morning, in two Memphis shootings that might be connected, according to CNN.
It’s unclear whether there were multiple shooters. Authorities said the motive is not yet known, USA Today reported.
On Friday, a man shot and killed six people – including his former wife and stepfather – in Arkabutla, Mississippi. The suspected shooter, identified by authorities as Richard Dale Crum, opened fire across several locations in the rural community of less than 300 people.
The New Orleans, Memphis, and Arkabutla mass shootings are among at least 82 mass shootings recorded in the US so far this year as Monday morning, averaging more than one daily, according to the Gun Violence Archive. The non-profit defines a mass shooting as four or more persons injured or killed, not including the shooter.
Joe Biden renewed calls for more substantial gun control legislation after the Mississippi shootings, saying in a statement: “Enough.”
“Thoughts and prayers aren’t enough,” the president said, employing the phrase often used by gun rights advocates in the wake of mass shootings. “Gun violence is an epidemic and Congress must act now. We need – need – commonsense gun law reforms.”
https://news.yahoo.com/orleans-carnival-parade-shooting-kills-145552047.html
