Unfortunately this happens all too often in New Orleans. Since 2012, 4 children have been killed by gunfire
http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2013/08/central_city_violence_takes_ti.html#incart_m-rpt-2
One boy was shot and injured at a birthday party where a 5 year old was shot and killed (Brianna Allen) and then 2 years later, he was injured shot and injured again at a mother's day parade.
The shooting in 2012 that killed the 5 year old girl (Brianna Allen) at a birthday party was hard for police to investigate because apparently it was an uncle at the party who was the intended target but the family refused to speak up because they wanted to handle it themselves. It was gang related. In that case "
Members of another gang, the 110'ers street group, were charged earlier this year in connection with Briana's killing. The indictment blamed the gang for 15 murders."
In another incident, Keira Holmes , just days shy of her second birthday, was playing with other children on a patch of grass at the B.W. Cooper public housing complex. Gunmen cruising the block opened fire on Emmett Allen, who was killed by gunfire in the B.W. Cooper housing complex December 18, 2011. When Allen ran into the courtyard where the children were playing, a hail of bullets followed. One struck Keira in the head and killed.
" Earlier this year, an Orleans Parish grand jury handed down a racketeering indictment, charging 18 people with being members of the 3-N-G gang responsible for 10 killings, "including Keira's. At least one of the people charged was a teenager".
2-year-old Jeremy Galmon, shot during a second-line parade on Sept. 26, 2010. Jeremy had been sitting in a parked car with his grandmother, while his mother watched the parade nearby at First and Dryades streets. When gunfire and chaos erupted, Jeremy peeked his head out of the car window and was struck in the cheek.
2 men, cousins Bernell "Benny" Pollard, 24, and Jamiron Pollard, 31, now face an automatic sentence of life in prison after being found guilty in that killing.
I taught in that neighborhood for 5 years as a public school teacher. Many of my students lived in the BW Cooper housing projects where Kiera Holmes was killed. I passed by those projects every day on the way to work.
Gangs, murders and crime have a huge hold in New Orleans. Many people don't want to tell the police what they know, because so many of them have family involved or are doing shady things themselves or are scared of the gangs. Some just prefer just to retaliate themselves with some more shooting rather than letting the police do their jobs.
If police try to patrol the area more to bring a police presence to try and make the neighborhood safer, then many complain that the neighborhood is being profiled. It is such a difficult thing for police to deal with and so many murders happen that they are overloaded.
I had students who slept in the bathtub because it was the safest place in the house when bullets start flying. This is crazy!! It is sad and horrific. This is just the tip of the iceberg unfortunately.