Wayne Mayo
A man arrested on gun charges during a traffic stop Monday in the Irish Channel may have been part of a shootout a few blocks away last week, police said Thursday.
Wayne Mayo, 17, was stopped during the investigation of a near collision Monday at the intersection of Chippewa Street and Washington Avenue, said Sgt. David Liang of the NOPD Sixth District task force. In his vehicle, police found two handguns, a .45-caliber automatic and a 9-mm, so Mayo was booked into jail on a gun charge, Liang said at the Sixth District’s weekly strategy meeting.
The 9-mm was missing its magazine, which suggests it may have been used in a gun battle at about 8 p.m. Oct. 8 at the intersection of Second and Annunciation streets – where a .9-mm magazine was found, said Sixth District Lt. Jeff Walls. In that incident, police believe there was a run-in between two feuding neighborhood groups, the Melpomene area’s “Young Melph Mafia” and a group from River Gardens, but the intended target of the shooting refuses to speak to police, Walls said.
The gunfight at that intersection left the street littered with dozens of spent casings, police said.
