The New Orleans Shooting Footage Has Boston-Style Sleuthing Problems
Police in New Orleans are seeking three suspects connected to the Mother's Day second-line parade shooting on Sunday, and they've released footage seeking your help in finding at least one of them. Are you ready for the best and worst of the Boston bombing's amateur photo-hunting all over again? Because there are already striking similarities — and at least one pair of sneakers that should give you pause about jumping to conclusions.
RELATED: Protesting the New Orleans Way: A Tailgate Rally to Save the Times-Picayune
On Monday morning NOPD released low-quality stills from surveillance footage (below) as well as video that appears to capture the main suspect:
RELATED: The Voice of Hacking Victims, Angry Bob Menendez, and Precious Gems
RELATED: Times-Picayune Reporter is Mad as Hell and She's Not Going to Take This Anymore
Here are a couple more screengrabs:
RELATED: Mother's Day Parade Shooting Injures at Least 19
RELATED: Zeitoun, Dave Eggers' Post-Katrina Hero, Faces Murder Solicitation Charges
And one more:
Police said "the three gunmen likely worked together, and at least two different weapons were used," The Times Picayune's Helen Freund reports. "One of the suspects is described as a man between 18 and 22 years old with short hair and wearing a white shirt and blue jeans." (That appears to be the man in the images above.)
As you can see, it's not exactly clear footage — and the nation has plenty of recent experience with ID-ing suspects based on low-quality surveillance footage from the Boston Marathon manhunt. And not unlike in Boston, this is not the only footage of the shooting. WPIX has some graphic footage of the aftermath from the bloody parade. This Vine footages claims to capture the moment the shots rang out on Frenchmen Street in the Seventh Ward:
It's clearly the same scene, as you can see some of the more easily identifiable people from the police footage, including the man in the green wig:
Boston taught us not to read too much into amateur footage, of course, but the first-person videos are a frightening reminder of just how populated the scene of the shooting really was. The Vine appears to capture a person dressed similar to the suspect wanted by police, though their shoes do not seem to match up:
Police are clearly in the middle of a manhunt, but there is at least a modicum of good news: Police say all of the 19 people shot, including the two children, are in good condition.
