On a day in which New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell is addressing crime and several other concerning issues in the city, a Bywater man described his nail-baiting brush with gun violence.
On The Scoot Show, Edgar first explained how normal everything around him felt. He and his wife were heading to their home in Bywater on Sunday night. She was driving. Edgar was in the passenger seat. His 85-year-old mother was in the backseat. They were on Elysian Fields Avenue near North Johnson Street when Edgar hears gun shots around them.
“And she’s telling me, get down. And I’m like what is going..and it happened so fast,” Edgar told Scoot.
Before he could grip on what was going on, Edgar said one car coming from Johnson street cut them off.
“I see bullets that are flying in front of the car,” said Edgar.
More gun fire would follow. Edgar and his wife felt trapped.
“And she told me there’s another car, he’s driving into oncoming traffic on the other side of the avenue and they’re shooting at each other, and there’s nothing you can do,” Edgar told Scoot.
According to the Metropolitan Crime Commission, the number of shooting incidents in New Orleans is less than it was in 2021. But as of May of 2022, homicides are up 56-percent. The MCC’s director recently said those numbers indicate that the people caught up shootings have a higher chance of dying, likely because of the increased firepower involved.
Scoot first heard of the shooting on Elysian Fields when Edgar sent him a text shortly after it happened. How did an “average” citizen like Edgar process the whole ordeal? Is this kind of shooting just typical for New Orleans? Click the link above to listen to Scoot and Edgar’s entire conversation to hear what Edgar refuses to do in the aftermath of the shooting.
