One killed, one wounded in Gert Town shooting

Posted by Robert Morris at 9:10 am crime, public safety

Feb 262013

A 46-year-old man was killed and a 23-year-old man was wounded Monday evening in the Gert Town area of Audubon Street, continuing a recent rash of street violence in the area since the weekend.

Monday night’s shooting was reported around 8:40 p.m., and police found the older man (later identified as Steven Anderson) dead with multiple gunshot wounds inside a home in the 3000 block of Audubon Street when they arrived, according to a NOPD news release. The younger man was shot in the leg and listed in stable condition.

(No NOPD crime map of the incident was immediately available Tuesday morning, but the 3000 block of Audubon is about two blocks on the river-side of Earhart Boulevard, and about two blocks behind St. Mary’s Dominican High School.)

The incident follows two shootings in the Gert Town-Broadmoor area this weekend. Around 9:20 p.m. Friday, a man was shot several times in the 3500 block of Audubon Court, and a woman was hit in the leg, according to our partners at WWL-TV. Around 1 p.m. Sunday, gunfire was reported in the 3300 block of Toledano, and a 26-year-old man then showed up at a local hospital with multiple gunshot wounds, according to initial police reports.

Audubon Street and Audubon Court have both seen previous shootings this year as well. On Feb. 11, Lundi Gras, a man was shot several times inside a home in the 2800 block of Audubon Street. One of the first homicides of the year was reported in the 3400 block of Audubon Court, where 30-year-old Michael Smith is accused of gunning down 25-year-old Joshua Walker on Jan. 6.

M. Walmsley

3000 Audubon is two blocks river-side of Earhart, not lake-side. It is also not Gert Town, Gert Town starts at the 3100 block – that is Marlyville-Fontainebleau.
UptownMessenger

Walmsley – thanks for the correction on the address. I had the map open when I was writing — it was just a strange typo.

On the neighborhood name, I appreciate your input. It’s a topic (generally) that I give a lot of thought to, since we have a neighborhood name in the name of this organization. I’d assume you’re referring to the official city boundaries, but we tend not to follow those too strictly — otherwise, we’d almost never write about “Uptown” news. It would all be in Touro, Audubon or West Riverside (in fact, once I asked generally if residents of West Riverside used any other name for their neighborhood, and one angry resident asked why I was suggesting “Uptown” wasn’t good enough).

I’d actually note that NOPD used “Gert Town” in their news release on this, but that wasn’t what made the decision for me. My rule of thumb, based on Tulane geographer Richard Campanella’s writing, is to define neighborhoods by their center points, not their hard-to-pinpoint boundaries. In this case, I looked at the map and saw Earhart as central to Gert Town, Fontainebleau as central to Fontainebleau (obviously), and that this block was closer to Earhart than Fontainebleau — hence “Gert Town.”

That said, an even stronger principal for me is allowing residents to self-identify. I’d like to hear more, but if this dividing line between the 3000 and 3100 blocks is strongly felt by people who live in them, I’ll certainly adopt it and thank you for your direction on it.

Yours,

Robert
- M. Walmsley
  
  I appreciate what you do here and any follow-up to this story would be great if NOPD comes up with anything. I’ve really always considered the area between Earhart and Xavier U as Gert Town, though I realize geographically it extends a few blocks towards the river. Most of the Gert Town trouble historically has occurred on the opposite side of Earhart. But you are correct, this year there have been several violent incidents in the 2800-3000 blocks and that is a concern to those of us that live in what is generally a quiet Marlyville-Fontainebleau neighborhood, even if it is on the very edge of it.