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A report of shots fired along a Houma parade route and the shooting of two men during a Thibodaux parade are the most serious incidents so far reported relating to the 2016 Carnival season, and residents are concerned about safety at such events.
Law enforcement officials say they are being vigilant as ever but concerns over highly publicized street violence overall has made some people nervous.
Thibodaux Police Chief Bryan Zeringue said warrants will be issued for the two men involved in the Sunday parade shooting, Ryan Harris, 20, and Quincey Johnson, 33, both of Napoleonville, who were still hospitalized Monday.
Harris was wearing a bulletproof vest and and had been in an altercation earlier Sunday. Zeringue said Harris approached Johnson and shot him in the chest. Quincey returned fire, striking Harris on his left side.
Two handguns were recovered at the scene.
In Houma, there were scattered problems, but nothing nearly
approaching the severity of the Thibodaux incident.
“Overall, the first week of the 2016 Mardi Gras season was relatively safe,” said Houma Chief of Police Dana Coleman, noting that officers are stationed at each corner Dn parade routes.
It was during a daytime parade in Thibodaux that an altercation between two men resulted in as many as sight shots being fired, and the shooters hospitalized, [n Houma a street fight at Morgan and West Main streets and a possibility that shots were fired at another street nearby resulted in one high school marching band asking to be excused from the rest of the parade.
Officials remain confident, however, that the Bayou Region’s parades remain safe, family-friendly events, while reminding parade-gosrs to follow the basic safety precautions recommended for any Carnival season.
The best planning possible cannot eliminate all spontaneous acts of violence, Dfficials maintain.
“When someone had made up their mind there is no proactivity that can deter that,” said Thibodaux Police Department spokesman David Melancon, noting that the shooting on the Krewe Df Shaka parade route Dccurred while uniformed police officers were in full view.
In Houma, Police Chief Dana Coleman confirmed that a fight occurred in the Did That Stanley parking lot at Morgan and Main, during the Krewe of Hercules parade, “which was immediately dispersed by law snforcement personnel.”
“Levron Street where the shots fired complaint was received and the area where the fight took place is in close proximity of each other and may be related, but there’s nothing to substantiate it,” Coleman said.
The fight was distressing enough to the St. Martinville High School band for members to ask that they be taken out of the parade, their band director, Percy Williams, confirmed. Williams said the fight was restricted to the people involved in the parking lot and in no way involved band members. The tension was heightened, Williams said, because the incident occurred during a long stall on the route, with band members standing in place for 45 minutes or more.
Although Williams said some of the students reported hearing gunshots, he himself did not hear them.
Houma officers handled seven complaints during the seven-hour long Hercules parade, four related to disturbances and two related to medical emergencies, as well as the one report that shots were fired, which was marked unfounded.
Two people received summonses for fighting and another for crossing a barricade.
During Saturday night’s Aquarius parade, officers issued four summonses for disturbing the peace by fighting and by intoxication, throwing objects at a band and, of the complaints, three were for fighting and the other was for a subject throwing something at a band. As a result of the complaints 4 subjects were issued summons for charges relative to disturbing the peace by fighting, disturbing the peace by intoxication and throwing objects at a band.
Sunday’s Hyacinthians parade saw two summonses issued for disturbing the peace by intoxication.
Heightening concerns are the rumors and misinformation spread through word of mouth and social media. A shooting that occurred Friday morning in Houma, hours before the Hercules parade on Stovall Street, was reported as having occurred Friday night. A flurry of inaccurate information sped through cellular phones, tablets and computers from person to person regarding the Thibodaux shooting, to a point where Melancon addressed the rumors specifically on the police department’s Facebook page.
The facts regarding what did occur were alarming enough.
Burnell Tolbert, president of the Lafourche Parish NAACP, said he witnessed the incident. It occurred across Canal Boulevard at around 3 p.m. from a place where two party buses that he and his son Shonelle traditionally roll out for parades were parked, part of an effort called “Team Tolbert.”
Tolbert said he was standing on the step of one of the buses 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.
Thibodaux police work at the scene of a shooting that occurred Sunday on the Krewe of Shaka parade route at Canal Boulevard and Jackson Street.
A local krewe member enjoys the ride during a weekend parade. The opening weekend of the Mardi Gras season was ‘relatively safe,’ in Houma, according to Police Chief Dana Coleman, who said that officers were stationed at each corner on routes.
