Two teen co-perpetrators charged in Panola Street home-invasion, police say

Solving the second of four major recent home invasion cases in the Carrollton area, investigators have charged two teens with participating in a home-invasion last week on Panola Street in which two women were tied up and robbed, New Orleans police said.

Aaron Johnson, 17, and Kevin Jones, 18, are both charged with armed robbery, false imprisonment with a weapon and aggravated burglary in the April 4 attack on Panola Street, police said.

Police had previously arrested 21-year-old James Johnson on Wednesday evening after finding him in a home on Hickory Street where he had just raped a woman, and he confessed to participating in the Panola Street case, officials said at the time.

On Friday at the citywide meeting of NOPD ranking officers, Second District Commander Paul Noel praised the arrests as the result of hard work done by investigators.

“That was amazing work by the detectives,” Noel said during a meeting in headquarters Friday. “Really great stuff.”

The Carrollton area has experienced two other home-invasion cases in recent weeks, an attack on two men in an Adams Street home in which one was pistol-whipped, and an attack on a woman on Green Street in which a man who called himself “Patrick” tried to strangle the victim. Both of those cases remain unsolved.

In the latter case, the victim has complained of her treatment by responding officers, saying that she felt they doubted she had been attacked by a stranger and that a lackluster investigation missed important leads. Noel has said he was not at the scene, but that the woman may be misconstruing some of the necessary initial questioning in the case, and that the entire department is taking the investigation very seriously.

Noel did not directly address the woman’s remarks Friday at police headquarters, but said his detectives have been working around the clock on all the recent Uptown incidents — including the arrest of two men, Daniel Adams and Rosel Guillen-Mendez, in connection with four recent home burglaries in the university area. Police suspect they may be involved in other burglaries in the area, and officers were investigating that possibility.

“When we get hit like this with serial crimes, it’s all hands on deck with everybody,” Noel said.

He added that several residence burglaries happened because the homes were left unlocked.

“Please help us protect you by locking your stuff: that’s the message we’ll be pushing out,” he said. “I think we have a good plan moving forward. We had a rough week, but we responded well to it.”