Richard Sansbury, 26
Richard Sansbury, the first of two men arrested for Monday’s armed robbery and shootout that left a New Orleans police officer wounded at an Uptown CVS drug store, made his first appearance in Orleans Parish Magistrate Court on Tuesday morning.
Booked with armed robbery with a firearm, two counts of false imprisonment with a weapon, and three counts of attempted first-degree murder of a police officer, Stansbury had a bond of $1.15 million set by Orleans Parish Magistrate Judge Harry Cantrell. Sansbury remains in police custody.
“I commend Judge Cantrell for … seeing this defendant for what he is: a dangerous, violent offender willing to shoot our police officers, who has no business freely walking our streets,” District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro said.
As part of his first appearance, the court’s Pretrial Services Program issued its Public Safety Assessment of this defendant, and arrived at the minimum score of Risk Level 1, which bears a recommendation of unsupervised release without conditions.
Cannizzaro took the opportunity to issue a press release blasting the use of the risk assessment tool used to reduce the jail population.
“Here we have a violent offender who attempted to rob a business and two employees at gunpoint, opened fire upon three police officers who responded — striking and injuring one of them — and comes to our city from Indianapolis, which should establish a risk of flight,” Cannizzaro said.
The bond amount was corrected in this report to reflect updated information from the district attorney’s office.
