Five teenagers shot dead in New Orleans

Published on 19/06/2006 01:42

FIVE teenagers aged between 16 and 19 were killed in a street shooting in New Orleans - the most violent crime reported in the city which is slowly repopulating following Hurricane Katrina last August.

All were believed to have been gunned down in a volley of bullets on a street in the Central City neighbourhood just outside the business district.

Three were found in a four-wheel-drive car rammed against a lamp-post and two on the street nearby.

Captain John Bryson said police think the shootings were either drug-related or some type of retaliation attack. A semi-automatic weapon was used and "multiple, multiple rounds" were fired, he said.

He said he could not recall the last time so many people were killed in one incident, before or after Katrina. "I can't remember five," he said.

Four of the victims - a 16-year-old, a 17-year-old and two 19-year-olds - died at the scene. Another 19-year-old, thought to be a brother of the youngest victim, died later at a hospital.

Meanwhile, a youth who won a 1.2 million settlement after being wrongly accused of murdering an 11-year-old girl in 1998, when he was seven, has been arrested in connection with a double shooting. Now 15, he was allegedly caught committing the crime on video surveillance.

One of his victims, whose name was not released, was on a life-support system in hospital, police said. The other suffered a bullet wound in the leg, but has talked to police.

The victims were parked in a car at a petrol station when the 15-year-old allegedly approached the driver's side door and his brother approached the passenger's side, each holding guns, the police chief said.

In 1998 the boy and a friend were accused over the death in Chicago of Ryan Harris, making them the youngest murder suspects in the US at the time.