Three people have died and seven more have been injured in a shooting reported in the 3400 block of South Claiborne Avenue on Saturday night (July 28), according to the New Orleans Police Department.
Police first reported that two people had died and six had been injured in the shooting. That notice from NOPD came at 8:59 p.m. Saturday.
Jonathan Fourcade, EMS spokesman, said three of the seven injured people were taken by ambulance to University Medical Center's trauma center. The other four arrived at the hospital by private means.
Two bodies could be seen on the ground Saturday night in front of Chicken & Watermelon, a restaurant in the 3400 block of South Claiborne.
Nearby, in the 2800 block of Louisiana Avenue, which New Orleans police have not confirmed is related to the South Claiborne shooting, officers could be seen standing on the front porch of a home with a squad car parked outside. Crime scene tape was wrapped around the front of the home, and a person could be heard grieving loudly nearby.
As officers began investigating the rainy, noisy scene near the restaurant on South Claiborne Avenue on Saturday, a fight broke out amongst onlookers, which police quickly quelled. Two people -- including a woman screaming "That's my son.
Someone please talk to me. Tell me what happened to my son." -- tried to run across the police line, and one woman was escorted away from the scene as she pleaded for one of the victims to "get up."
Later, at 9:45 p.m., two men attempted to console two women as they sobbed and shouted.
"Oh, Lord Jesus, this can't be real," one of the women said.
"That's my baby," shouted the other, before repeating, "I'm going to kill them. I'm going to kill them. They took my child, I'm going to kill them."
A silver Toyota sedan was parked outside the restaurant, and its driver's side door was open with the car's hazard lights on. A man's body was seen lying in front of the door to the restaurant, and another body was on the ground behind a screen police typically use for shielding crime scenes. The area was littered with more than 20 evidence cones.
"It's not normally like this right here. They don't usually wild out like this anymore over here," a man at the scene said earlier. "I was at home, I didn't see nothing but this is a neighborhood spot, with regulars and whatever. Not a place you'd expect this."
Lawrence Russo was buying a scratch-off ticket at an Exxon station near the restaurant when he heard what he described as a few batches of intermittent gunshots, which he at first thought were firecrackers because of the spacing. In total, he said, he heard between 13 and 16 shots fired.
The shots sounded close, but Russo didn't realize how close until he saw the scene developing outside the gas station.
"They never stop killing each other," said, shaking his head as he spoke.
Stay with NOLA.com as more details come available.
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