Can't Keep Up

Under a house for ten hours on a Saturday, it seems to some of our editors that life just stops moving. But it doesn't. With as many murders as days in 2008, one might wonder why a typical ninth ward mortgage on a new home purchase is upwards of $1900 before taxes and utilities.

All factors considered, why would we keep living here? For the blogging opportunities, of course. Give the papers an opportunity for self-referentiality.

While tourists fill the streets of the Quarters in Red and White and Yellow and Purple, locals fill the streets with the black blood of our cities youth and hispanic labor force. Apparently.

Lets start on the West Bank: The Devil is in the Details, eh Flot?
The victim of a Friday evening shooting has been identified Saturday by the coroner's office as Jose Francisco Ramos, 44. Ramos was shot at least three times, including once in the face, and died in the front yard at 138 Pinewood Court.
Detectives believe the motive was robbery. The suspects probably are in their late teens. Both wearing hooded garments under puffy ski jackets with squares on them at the time of the killing. One of the parkas was black and the other was brown.

NO East:
A teenage shooting victim died Saturday, two days after he was gunned down in eastern New Orleans, the Orleans Parish coroner's office said. He was the city's third homicide victim in the first five days of 2008, police said. Kendrick Quinn, 18, of New Orleans, was shot in the head Thursday shortly before 4 p.m. in the 6800 block of Parc Brittany Boulevard and was taken to University Hospital

Two Murders Last Night:
Holy Crap Holy Cross, this one has got a proximity rating of 2.

In the first incident, 5th District police responded to a call of a "male down" in the 1100 block of Lizardi Street, near the intersection of St. Claude Avenue, at approximately 1 a.m. Sunday. They found a man with multiple gunshot wounds lying in an alley adjacent to an abandoned house. There was drug paraphernalia on the scene, police said

The Second: Not so much.
Police were alerted to the second homicide just after 7 a.m. Sunday. They found a man dead of a gunshot wound near John F. Kennedy High School, in the 5700 block of Wisner Boulevard. No further details about the incident were available.

And for good measure:

Eastern New Orleans was the scene of another shooting Saturday.
A man was shot in the face and shoulder about 5 p.m. in the 10700 block of Roger Drive, a block north of Interstate 10, said Jeb Tate of New Orleans Emergency Medical Services. He said the victim was taken to University Hospital in critical condition. The shooting occurred between Read Boulevard and Wright Road.

There also was a shooting Saturday in New Orleans' Irish Channel neighborhood.
At about 2 p.m., 6th District officers found a 27-year-old man with a gunshot wound to the knee near Constance Street and Washington Avenue. The injury was not life-threatening.


RECAP:

That's 5 murders and two shootings, one of which is critical.

Dear Lord,
Please sort this out.
-NOMB