NEW ORLEANS — Police said a drive-by shooting killed a man and an 18-year-old woman and wounded five other people, three of them children, in the Lower 9th Ward, a neighborhood that was ravaged by Hurricane Katrina and has struggled with crime. A woman and two children, aged 2 and 4, were in critical condition and a 13-year-old girl and a 37-year-old woman were in stable condition, Officer Frank Robertson, a police spokesman, said in a news release. He said all were in front of a house when a dark car occupied by men drove up, opened fire and sped off. The slain man appeared to be in his late 20s, Robertson said in an email.

The Lower Ninth, a predominantly black neighborhood less than 5 miles from the bustling tourist district of the French Quarter, was overwhelmed by Hurricane Katrina's floods in 2005. In a separate, unrelated spate of violence, a 20-year-old man shot a friend Sunday morning inside a hotel room at the edge of the Quarter, then killed himself after a three-hour standoff with police, authorities said.

IN-DEPTH

TWITTER

Trending: Police: Armed man barricaded at Westin Hotel in downtown New Orleans http://t.co/xD2duvkSAL pic.twitter.com/iaTwZ6V4xb — wdsu (@wdsu) August 10, 2014

—The Associated Press