Two people were killed and six people were injured Saturday night (March 2) in the 3200 block of Esplanade Avenue after being hit by a vehicle in the Bayou St. John neighborhood, the NOPD is reporting. A suspect is in custody.
New Orleans EMS pronounced the two people who were killed dead on the scene. NOPD Chief Shaun Ferguson said that most of the people hit were bicyclists, but it was not clear if all eight were on bikes.
Three of the people who were injured are in critical condition, according to EMS officials. A total of five injured people were transported to University Medical Center, officials said, with one person who was injured declining to be taken to the hospital.
Police first received reports of a medical emergency at 8:05 p.m., Ferguson said. The crash scene spanned two blocks, from the 3200 block to the 3400 block of Esplanade Avenue.
The names of the suspect and victims, as well as information about their ages or the victims’ genders, were not immediately available. Ferguson said police are still investigating whether the driver was intoxicated, and that he will be taken to the hospital after a standard protocol involving tests like breathalyzer and blood tests.
“We were able to apprehend the subject so quickly because citizens stopped this individual, because they thought they were helping someone who had just been involved in a one-car accident,” Ferguson said.
Shortly before 8:30 p.m., city officials sent out an alert advising motorists to avoid the area while emergency medical personnel and the New Orleans Police Department worked the scene.
The crash occurred on the same night the Krewe of Endymion was rolling through Mid-City in its annual Mardi Gras parade. It comes two years after a drunken driver plowed into a crowd of people during Endymion’s 2017 parade. More than 30 people were injured that night. The driver, Neilson Rizzuto, was sentenced to five years in prison with one year of the sentence suspended in that crash.
Ferguson said investigators are still determining where the driver and the victims were coming from and going to. Despite the proximity to the parade route, Ferguson said “we do not believe at this point in time that this has anything to do with the Endymion parade.”
Tessa Carrington said she was sitting in the fenced in area of a house at Esplanade and Maurepas with friends when the crash occurred. They had returned from the parade about 40 minutes earlier. Her boyfriend heard three loud “booms,” she said.
She later saw two bikes on the ground near her car, which was parked near Cabrini High School. She said her boyfriend gave first responders flashlights to help direct traffic away from the area after the crash happened.
Nick, a parade goer who declined to give his last name, said he walked by the scene and saw mangled bicycles and emergency responders tending to the injured lying on the ground. None appeared to be moving much, he said.
“There was no one screaming, no one crying,” he said. “It was completely silent.”
It looked as if someone had driven along the grassy median on Esplanade, tearing up dirt and plants for maybe a half block, he said. At the end was a black car with heavy damage, stopped halfway on the median.
Source: http://www.nola.com
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