New Orleans – Breakfasting on beignets in the French Quarter on a Sunday morning, Dorothy Washington was a tourism official’s dream – she saw none of the scars that still mark most of New Orleans 11 months after Hurricane Katrina, and she had heard nothing about six weekend shooting deaths.
“Really, I haven’t seen any sign of the hurricane or crime. The French Quarter’s a whole other world to itself,” said Washington, 26, of Philadelphia.
However, city leaders and people who make a living in the tourism industry fear that New Orleans is building a national reputation that could harm its fragile recovery.
That reputation was fostered by the deaths in June of five teenagers gunned down while sitting in a sport utility vehicle, the subsequent assignment of state police and National Guard troops to help keep the peace in the city, and this past weekend’s six gunshot killings in 24 hours.
“It dampens the progress we are making since the hurricane,” said City Councilwoman Shelley Midura. “This is not what most people in New Orleans encounter. Most people in New Orleans do not experience any type of violence. But this is the image that is being formed of the city, and it will hurt us if it continues.”
The weekend’s spate of violence began Friday night when three brothers and a friend were killed several blocks from the French Quarter in the Treme neighborhood. They were sitting on a porch when two men walked by, turned around and fired, said police Superintendent Warren Riley.
Two other people were gunned down in separate incidents hours later in other neighborhoods, one close to busy St. Charles Avenue between a daiquiri shop and a restaurant that both had customers at the time.
No arrests had been made in the latest killings as of Sunday afternoon.
“On top of everything else, this is just what we need,” said Archie Casbarian, owner of Arnaud’s restaurant in the French Quarter. “So far, I don’t think it’s hurting tourism. I haven’t heard any tourist expressing concern. But there’s no question I’m concerned.”
The body count is mounting, with 78 homicides so far, 21 of them in July. In the first six months of last year, before the Katrina exodus, 134 people were killed.
