Weekend of violence also left a man dead after a stand-off with police in a hotel on the fringes of the tourist district

Two dead and children aged two and four critical after New Orleans shooting

A drive-by shooting in a New Orleans has left a man and an 18-year-old woman dead and five others wounded, three of them children, police said.

A woman and two children, aged 2 and 4, were in a critical condition and a 13-year-old girl and a 37-year-old woman were stable after the shooting in the lower ninth ward, Frank Robertson, a police spokesman, said in a news release.

He said the victims were in front of a house when a dark car occupied by men drove up, opened fire and sped off. The dead man appeared to be in his late 20s, Robertson said in an email.

The lower ninth, a poor neighbourhood less than five miles from the tourist district of the French Quarter, was overwhelmed by Hurricane Katrina’s floods in 2005. It has been one of the slowest parts of the city to recover because many homeowners did not have insurance.

In a separate, unrelated spate of violence, a 20-year-old man shot and wounded a friend on Sunday morning in a hotel at the edge of the Quarter, then killed himself after a three-hour standoff with police, authorities said.

Those shootings happened in a 17th-floor room at The Westin on Canal Street, where four friends from the Lafayette area were staying together for the weekend, Robertson said in a news release.

Three of them came in from partying in the Quarter, waking the fourth about 5am, Robertson said.

He said the man returned to sleep only to be awakened by the plea, “Put the gun down.” The 20-year-old, looking “dazed and confused under the influence of some unknown substance,” was pointing a gun at their 24-year-old friend, he said.

The older man kept asking his friend to put the gun down, Robertson said, but about 6:30am, the 20-year-old man shot him in the chest. The other two ran for help, hearing a second shot as they fled.

When hotel staff let police into the room, the 20-year-old pointed a gun at them, Robertson said. The officers backed out and called a SWAT team.

After about three hours of negotiations, the 20-year-old man apparently shot himself and the SWAT team stormed in. He was pronounced dead about 9:55am.

Rescue workers rushed the 24-year-old to a hospital where he was in stable condition Sunday evening.