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February 1, 2016
Thibodaux’s first parade of the Carnival season took on disaster movie hues Sunday when two men fired guns at each other just after the procession began to roll.
(To see crime scene video footage, click here)
Thibodaux police and witness accounts confirmed that two men were shot during an altercation in a parking lot at Canal Boulevard near the intersection of Jackson Street, across from where Canal also meets Peltier Street.
The Krewe of Shaka parade was rerouted onto Peltier as the two wounded men were tended to. No bystanders were known to have been injured. A police spokesman said the two men were taken to Thibodaux Regional Medical Center.
Their conditions and identities have not yet been made available. Thibodaux Police Sgt. David Melancon said one is in his 20’s and the other in his 30’s. Both are from Assumption Parish, he said.
Burnell Tolbert, president of the Lafourche Parish NAACP, said he witnessed the incident. It occurred across Canal Boulevard from a place where one of two party busses that he and his son Shonelle traditionally roll out for parades, part of an effort called “Team Tolbert.”
Shortly after noon, Tolbert said, he was standing on the step of one of the busses when he saw, in the parking lot across from the neutral ground, a man wearing what appeared to be a bulletproof vest confront another and push him up against a food float, holding him around the throat.
“The one being choked said, ‘Leave that alone, you don’t have to be doing this.’ They both pulled their guns out, it looked like they started shooting at the same time,” Tolbert said, then described a scene of pandemonium as children hid behind the busses for cover and people screamed, scattering in different directions.
The initial aggressor, Tolbert said, ran off and then collapsed. The other man, he said, collapsed beside the bus, which Tolbert said had a bullet in it.
Police routed the parade away from the crime scene, down Peltier, before bringing it back around to its normal route further up Canal Boulevard.
The problem of young black men committing violence against each other, Tolbert said, was a chief topic of discussion at his organization’s last board meeting. Ironically, his son has been working on a “Stop The Violence” float for the upcoming Krewe of Ghana parade.
“We talk about this a lot. We are trying to find ways to curb black on black violence,” Tolbert said. “It is and has been at the top of our agenda.”
