Posted on 07/06/2014 1:22:46 PM PDT by BBell
Bourbon Street shooting suspect, person of interest and one of the victims visited French Quarter together
A photograph uploaded to Facebook a year ago shows three West Bank men posing together on Bourbon Street. One holds a florescent-green cup and another makes an obscene gesture to the camera.
The trio emerged this week as central characters -- a victim, a witness and a suspect -- in a mass shooting on the city's famous thoroughfare that killed a woman and wounded nine others.
Police say the man shown in the middle, Trung Tran Le, 20, got into a fight with another man around 2:45 a.m. last Sunday (June 29) outside a strip of bars in the 700 block of Bourbon. Le fired the first shot, authorities allege, and the man returned fire. Le's friend, Robert Benvenuti, 22, shown on the left, was one of those struck by bullets, police records show. And the face of the third man in the photo, Justin Odom, 20, was plastered on national news outlets as police publicized that he was wanted for questioning. He was released soon after a two-hour interview with detectives.
The shooting, which killed 21-year-old nursing student Brittany Thomas and wounded six out-of-towners, came days before thousands of visitors would descend on downtown New Orleans for the Essence Festival and drew a spotlight on the city's dwindling police manpower. Mayor Mitch Landrieu pleaded for State Police to assign 100 troopers to the city and for federal authorities to step up their assistance fighting violence in a city notorious for its crime problem.
This type of tragedy strikes at the heart of who we are as a people and as a city," Landrieu said in a statement after Thomas died at a hospital.
A week after the shooting, police have one suspect -- Le -- in
(Excerpt) Read more at nola.com ...
ping
Muslims??
Picture at link. If I posted the picture I’m sure it would get pulled.
I’ve heard that the French Quarter draws a rough crowd. While it’s a major tourist attraction in New Orleans, it also can be a dangerous place.
According to people I know in the credit card business, a disproportionate number of lost credit cards, due to pickpockets and robbers, come from the French Quarter. Just saying.
The shooter is Oriental-Chinese or Vietnamese. The released guy is Caucasian. Everyone I know is stunned that it doesn`t appear to be the usual black thugs who routinely shoot ach other down in the streets.
Looks like three punk wannabes who had too much to drink. There are consequences.
Looks like three punk wannabes who had too much to drink. There are consequences.
20 years in prison for manslaughter/negligent homicide would be a good start.
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