Police mark off bullet casings in the intersection of Milan and Clara streets after a Friday evening shooting. (Photos by Sabree Hill, UptownMessenger.com)
A man survived a burst of gunfire on Milan Street early Friday evening with only a bullet wound to the leg, police and witnesses said.
The victim was outside a home in the 2700 block of Milan Street around 6:30 p.m. Friday, when the attackers drove up and began firing toward the house from the nearby intersection with Clara Street, police said. The victim was hit in the leg and the gunmen then fled, said Lt. John Montalbano of the NOPD Second District.
The mother of the victim, who is not being named by UptownMessenger.com, said her 26-year-old son had been sitting with her and several other family members not long before the shooting, when he told her he was leaving to go to Milan Street. After he left, she decided to walk up to a Claiborne Avenue convenience store with two of her grandchildren, she said.
As they walked, someone passing on the street asked her if she’d heard about a shooting on Milan Street, she said. The thought flashed in her mind that it might be her son, but she shrugged it off and kept going, she said. When she got to the store, however, police had it blocked off to look for the Milan Street shooters, she said, and in the crowd there she overheard someone saying the victim was her son.
“I said, ‘That was my son?’ ” she said. “He said, ‘He was only hit in the leg.’ ”
Police found at least 15 spent rounds in the street.
The woman watched as investigators counted 15 bullet casings in the street next to the Petty A.M.E. Zion Church, boarded up since Hurricane Katrina. Neighbors walking by offered their sympathy to her, decrying the shooting as “cold blooded.”
The woman said she was often concerned about her son’s being out. He has only been out of jail for a few months, she said, and just a few weeks ago he had gone to retrieve his sister from a party and come back with his face badly beaten. When she would see him sitting out, she would warn him to come back home with her.
“I would tell him, ‘Let’s go. I know you’re 26, but you’ve got to listen sometime,'” she said.
He and the mother of his three young children had evacuated to Texas during Hurricane Katrina, and the girlfriend never returned to New Orleans. Ever since he got out of jail, the victim’s mother said she has been urging his parole officer to let her son rejoin his family in Texas, where he would be safer.
“He’ll be closer to his children. He’ll stay in, that’s what I believe,” she said. “I think he just got caught up tonight.”
The intersection - near the shuttered Petty AME Zion Church - was blocked off while police investigated.
Contact reporter Robert Morris at rmorris@NolaMessenger.com or photographer Sabree Hill at sabreehill@NolaMessenger.com, or post your comment below.
