Robbery call on Clara brings heavy police response, but victim’s account raises investigators’ doubts

After a recent rash of violent armed robberies in Uptown New Orleans, report of another on Clara Street on Wednesday afternoon drew the rapid response of nearly a dozen officers, but the alleged victim then withdrew his account, raising investigators’ suspicions as to what actually happened in the first place. The robbery was first reported shortly after noon on Clara near Valence, just a few blocks away from Oschner Baptist Medical Center. Patrol officers swept through the area looking for a suspect while detectives began interviewing the alleged victim and his friend, but the two gave differing accounts of the robbery, “which raised our suspicions that a robbery actually occurred,” said Lt. Mike Montalbano of the NOPD Second District investigative unit. Detectives took the two men back to the Second District station for further questioning, and there the alleged victim became irate and told the detectives to “just write my report,” Montalbano said. When the police told him they would investigate the robbery and attempt to confirm his account, Montalbano said he said he no longer wanted to talk to police, and he was taken back to Clara Street.

Weekend robberies cluster in Uptown neighborhoods

Robberies were reported at eight different addresses around Uptown New Orleans neighborhoods over the weekend — four in the Riverbend area, two in the Hurstville neighborhoods near Audubon Park, and one each in the Freret and Touro neighborhoods.

Construction begins on Clara-Jena roadwork in Freret

Construction has begun on a minor road project in the Freret neighborhood intended to improve access to Ochsner Baptist Medical Center prior to the major traffic disruptions that will accompany an upcoming drainage project on Napoleon Avenue. The pavement will be replaced and storm drains and water leaks will be repaired along two blocks of Clara (from Napoleon to Cadiz) and one adjacent block of Jena, said Robert Mendoza, New Orleans director of Public Works, at a small town-hall meeting Tuesday night. The construction of a major box canal underneath Napoleon Avenue this summer will hamper ambulance service to the hospital, so the city requested and received federal tax money to improve the secondary routes to the hospital beforehand, he said. “Its main goal is to provide secondary access to the Oschner emergency room and parking when Napoleon shuts down,” Mendoza said of the project. The project is technically known as the Freret-Napoleon project, a confusing misnomer because both Napoleon and Freret are scheduled for significant work in the coming months.

Uptown police battle wave of muggings

An aspiring chef was stabbed just off Prytania and a bank manager was robbed in his car while driving through Fontainebleau in a wave of seemingly unconnected muggings around Uptown New Orleans over the last week, police said Wednesday.