Two men shot ‘indiscriminately’ in area popular with locals, police say, as city mayor calls for end to violence

Three people were killed and seven injured when two men opened fire into a large crowd outside a New Orleans strip mall on Saturday.

Police said the men shot “indiscriminately”, one with a rifle and the other with a handgun. According to the city police chief, Michael Harrison, the pair stood over one person and fired multiple shots before fleeing.

First responders found two men and one woman who were pronounced dead at the scene. Five men and two women were taken to two hospitals. None were immediately publicly identified.

The two suspects remained at large and Harrison asked for the community’s help.

“A lot of people were out here tonight,” he said. “A lot of people, we know, saw what happened, heard what happened. And we need more than anything for people to come forward to help the [New Orleans police department] right now solve this case.”

The uptown strip mall is located several miles from the tourist-heavy French Quarter. Home to a daiquiri shop and late night eatery, on Saturday night the parking lot and sidewalk often hosts crowds of locals.

“It’s not normally like this right here,” one man told the Times Picayune at the scene on Saturday night. “They don’t usually wild out like this anymore over here. I was at home, I didn’t see nothing but this is a neighborhood spot, with regulars and whatever. Not a place you’d expect this.”

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Harrison said police were not sure if the shooting was gang related.

In a statement released late on Saturday, New Orleans’ mayor, LaToya Cantrell, said she would “dedicate every resource necessary to ending this horror and seeing justice done”.

“There is no place in New Orleans for this kind of violence,” Cantrell said. “I speak for everyone in our city when I say we are disgusted, we are infuriated, and we have had more than enough. Three more lives – gone. It has to end.”