George Short, 43, pleaded guilty to manslaughter in Central City shooting death.
George Short was sentenced to 20 years last week for the killing of a man in Central City in 2014.
Short, 43, averted his scheduled murder trial and potential life sentence on Feb. 20 by entering into a plea agreement as potential jurors lined up outside the courtroom of Criminal District Judge Arthur Hunter, District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro’s office reported.
Under the terms of the agreement, Short pleaded guilty to an amended charge of manslaughter, two counts of illegal possession of a firearm by a felon, and one count of introducing contraband into a corrections facility.
On Feb. 21, Hunter sentenced him to 20 years on each count, to be served concurrently, putting him behind bars for two decades.
Short, 43, pleaded guilty to fatally shooting Danny “Disco” Nelson near the corner of Washington Avenue and South Robertson Street on June 7, 2014. The shooting came a short time after Nelson had returned home from prison, and was in apparent retaliation for an attempt on Short’s life some 20 years earlier.
“Sadly, this is another example of how the cycle of violence continues in New Orleans when people pick up guns as a means to resolve their disputes,” Cannizzaro said. “One shooting begets another, until we have one victim killed and another facing decades in prison.”
Nelson, 36, was gunned down around 6:42 p.m., and was pronounced dead later that night at the what was then LSU Interim Hospital. New Orleans police investigators developed Short as the suspect in the shooting, and arrested him during an early morning raid on a house in the 4500 block of Bonita Street in New Orleans East on Sept. 11, 2015.
A second defendant was charged with Nelson’s murder in a superseding indictment last March. But after further investigation, that count against Wallace Gilmore was deemed unprovable and dismissed last Oct. 5.
Assistant District Attorneys Kevin Guillory, Michelle Jones and John Nickel prosecuted the case.
