In an exclusive interview with WWL-TV, New Orleans trumpeter and local celebrity Kermit Ruffins begs the shooter of his pregnant girlfriend, Harmonese Pleasant, to turn himself.
Pleasant, 29, was just weeks away from her due date when she was shot by someone while she was talking on her phone outside their Treme home on Thursday.
Pleasant was rushed to the hospital by EMS where she underwent an emergency C-section. She and the baby are reportedly doing fine.
“Please turn yourself in and do one thing right in your life,” Ruffins told WWLTV’s reporter David Hammer.
News of the shooting made headlines and prompted Ruffins to give his account of what happened that day.
Ruffins laid out that day’s timeline in a social media post, saying they went to a doctor’s appointment to “pick up some stuff needed for home birth” and pick up lunch for them at Mandina’s restaurant.
“Then right about 6:30 I get the phone call no human being wanna get! She’s screaming a sound I never heard in my life and the phone hung up," said Ruffins.
"I jumped in my truck the house is about eight blocks from the mother-in-law lounge when I get home she was laying on my son-in-law’s lap with my daughter and her uncle and some other people from the neighborhood with blood coming from her stomach. I pulled the dress to the side and saw a small hole ambulance came, then at the hospital emergency surgery to get the baby out the baby was helicoptered to Children’s Hospital she’s doing good Harmonese is doing good THANK GOD!!!!!!”
Ruffins says the shooting is not the result of him being involved in any type of illegal activity.
“Neither her nor I are involved in anything illegal or diminishing towards others,” Ruffins said in the post.