New Orleans police investigate a double shooting that killed a man and wounded a woman Wednesday morning, March 23, 2022, on Chef Menteur Highway in Gentilly.
A person is comforted after a man was killed and a woman injured in a shooting Wednesday morning, March 23, 2022, at Providence Place and Chef Menteur Highway in Gentilly, New Orleans police said.
New Orleans police investigate a double shooting that killed a man and wounded a woman Wednesday morning, March 23, 2022, on Chef Menteur Highway in Gentilly.
The man gunned down in a Gentilly drive-by shooting Wednesday had been on the way to a pretrial court hearing in the killing of an Edna Karr High School student and his stepsister. The man's mother, who was accompanying her son to Orleans Parish Criminal District Court, was badly wounded in the gunfire.
Hollis Carter, 21, was shot in the head just before 9 a.m. while driving on Chef Menteur Highway, as he and a passenger in a white sedan were stopped at a traffic light, according to New Orleans police and Carter's attorney, John Fuller, who identified Carter as the deceased victim. He said the passenger was Carter's mother but did not provide her name.
Fuller said he thought the killing was related to the double homicide.
"Street justice has resulted in an assurance that there would never be any closure in this case," Fuller said.
Had the case gone to trial, Fuller he planned to show that a person other than Carter fired the weapon that killed Caleb Johnson, an 18-year-old Karr senior, and Breyiana Brown, his 25-year-old stepsister, at an Algiers apartment complex on March 28, 2021.
Police secured a videotaped confession from Carter, also a Karr graduate, who said he shot Johnson and Brown after a gun sale went south. Fuller said he planned to argue that Carter confessed because he was afraid of the actual killer, who has never been publicly identified or arrested.
The district attorney's office would not comment on Fuller's defense, saying the case is still open.
But that trial will never come to pass. On Wednesday, police said a black Ford F-150 pickup truck pulled alongside the car carrying Carter and his mother and fired into the vehicle. Carter's mother fell out of the sedan onto the pavement, police said, as the vehicle rolled forward down the street. Police found Carter dead at the scene.
His mother suffered multiple gunshot wounds and was hospitalized in critical condition.
After the shooting, a woman sat behind yellow crime scene tape and rocked herself back and forth, crying over and over: “They killed my baby.”
A person is comforted after a man was killed and a woman injured in a shooting Wednesday morning, March 23, 2022, at Providence Place and Chef Menteur Highway in Gentilly, New Orleans police said.
Mike Smith, an assistant pastor at Bethel Community Baptist Church, which operates a car wash and at least two other businesses on the block, said car wash employees watched as someone “unloaded” a gun into the sedan. The shooter fired at least eight shots, he said.
Carter had been expected in court for a status hearing. He was charged with two counts of second-degree murder in the Algiers double homicide, plus attempted second-degree murder for allegedly injuring a third victim.
Fuller said he is "still committed to proving [Carter's] innocence. He doesn't deserve to have his obituary tainted by what were basically false charges."
Carter had been jailed in lieu of $375,000 bail until October, when he posted bond and was released, according to court records.
"He was a good kid. He was working at a restaurant. He was abiding by all of the restrictions required by a defendant who’s out on bond," Fuller said. "He was loved by his family. This is tragic."
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