Bang-up Mardi Gras

Whew!: The alert have noticed there have been no NOcrimeline reports for a week. Part of that has to do with getting my head around a nagging toothache; the bigger part of it has to do with getting my head around 11 shootings on Mardi Gras. 11!

• Add to that the fact one of the alleged shooters that day and one from the Wendy Byrne shooting were wearing ankle monitoring bracelets while on probation.

• Add to that rumors that Mayor Nagin may have had some shady dealings with the company supposedly monitoring the wayward suspects.
  

Whew, indeed. Where to begin?

• Only one in French Quarter: While bullets flew in other parts of the city, only one found a target in the 8th District's French Quarter. Less than a half hour after the mounted police and trash trucks moved down Bourbon Street to shut down Mardi Gras, officers heard gunshots and found a 21-year-old man laying on the sidewalk in the 100 block of Bourbon Street about 12:29 a.m. Wednesday (2.25.09) with a gunshot wound to his side.

He was taken to University Hospital in stable condition, but was so out of it that he fought with police and even denied he had been shot. And they said there's no such thing as too much booze. Detectives will attempt to interview him again, when he's more cognizant.

• 7th this year in Iberville: The police think a murder suspect is holed up in the Iberville Housing Project. They're looking for 25-year-old James Herbert in the shooting death of a man Thursday (2.26.09) at Conti and Treme streets.

No word yet whether they've collared Shateek Howard, a 16-year-old punk who escaped while leaving Juvenile Court a couple of weeks ago, who's suspected of murder and last lived in the notorious housing project, where there have been 7 shot so far this year.

• Too close for comfort: One of 3 hoodlums wanted in a shooting and killing rampage a couple of weeks ago in Jefferson Parish was apprehended Thursday (2.26.09) at noon at Canal and Baronne streets, right across from Dauphine Street in the Quarter. Steve Givens, 18, was charged with attempted murder.

Police say Givens and his 2 cohorts, all of whom live in New Orleans, were responsible for the murder of one man, the wounding of 2 others, and for shooting a 16-year-old runaway girl who is now paralysed from the waist down.

• So who was watching the bad guys?: It turns out the 2 punks charged with mowing down 7 people on the St. Charles Avenue parade route Mardi Gras afternoon were both on probation for other offenses. Lazone Lewis (right), 18, was already wanted on an arrest warrant for skipping a court date, and Mark Brooks (left), 20, the alleged shooter, was wearing an electronic ankle bracelet to monitor whether he was obeying his 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew.

• More disturbing was the revelation, from the investigation by Katie Moore of WWL-TV, was that one of the 2 juveniles being held for the murder of Wendy Byrne a month and a half ago was wearing an electronic ankle bracelet to enforce his house arrest. But it failed to keep Drey Lewis, 15, home the night Byrne was shot dead in the Quarter.

• More disturbing still is the revelation that Mayor Nagin and his supersecret screening committee (you know, the one he disbanded rather than have them meet openly to make the process transparent) picked a different--but politically well-connected company--to run the monitoring program in 2005.

Maybe Moore, or even the Times-Picayune (once it stops bailing out its sinking ship), can find out how the current company got the job. Either way, it appears Nagin's fingerprints are on this.

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As always, your comments and suggestions are welcome at NOcrimeline@gmail.com

Thom Kahler