Police say an arrest has been made after a man was killed in a shooting near the intersection of Bourbon and Conti streets in New Orleans just before 1:30 a.m. Monday morning. Witnesses said the scene was chaotic and terrifying.
Janaya Vargas is a tourist visiting from New York and staying on Bourbon Street.
“All of a sudden we’re right across the street, and we hear like pops, pops, you know, and obviously gunshots. Because I, you know, New Yorker, again, I thought it was fireworks,” Vargas said.
She quickly realized what the noise was.
“So, we start running,” Vargas said. “We’re running around like halfway down the block, and we look back and see one of the cops pinning down someone on the floor, and we’re like, ‘Oh, (expletive).'”
Tyshawn Holmes is a street performer who was finishing work at the time shots were fired.
“It was chaotic out there,” Holmes said. “It was really, really chaotic and people were scared out here. They was terrified for they life out here.”
Police say another shooting happened nearby on Canal Street just before 7 p.m. Sunday. A woman was shot in the arm and taken to the hospital.
Matthew Stone, communication and development director for the New Orleans Police and Justice Foundation, said an uptick in brutal crime could have to do with the weather.
“There is a very, very strong correlation between the heat and an increase in violence. And there’s a lot of different theories about why that happens,” Stone said.
He told WDSU that, overall, violent crime is down in the city and police are arresting suspects in a majority of murder cases.
Vargas said seeing a shooting on her first visit did not change her feelings about New Orleans.
“I definitely would come back for sure,” Vargas said. “This ain’t nothing new to me.”
Holmes, a local, says he feels similarly.
“I’m used to this, and when shots go down, people start ducking out here,” Holmes said. “That’s what you do.”
READ MORE:Arrest made after man killed in Bourbon Street shooting, witnesses describe chaos
