Photographer Abdul Aziz witnessed the shooting at a New Orleans parade on Mother's Day, and he believes he was standing right next to the gunmen.
"I personally saw the muzzle flash from the gun and began to run towards the direction of a few of my friends that I saw. I also saw a number of individuals fall to the ground and immediately start to grab their wounds and call for help," he tells Anderson Cooper.
19 people were injured in the shooting at the second-line parade Sunday. Police Superintendent Ronal Serpas said that authorities have identified the suspect as 19-year-old Akein Scott. It's not clear yet if there was more than one shooter behind the gunfire.
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Post by: Filed under: Crime & Punishment • New Orleans |
With the Super Bowl in New Orleans tonight, the city is buzzing. What has happened here in seven short years can only be described as an amazing transformation.
There are plenty of problems that continue to haunt the town, including a crime rate that is much higher than anyone would like. Still, residents here take great pride in what they describe as a return from the depths of suffering in the wake of Katrina.
Part of the journey was a dramatic Saints Super Bowl victory in 2010 and now the revamped Mercedes-Benz Superdome is hosting the 2013 fight for the NFL title. While significant, those milestones pale in comparison to the comeback this city has seen in what many appreciate most about New Orleans: its food.
We have been coming to New Orleans every year since Katrina. With each visit we always see a little more improvement. Anyone who was here seven years ago will tell you that this city had a long way to go to rebuild.
It wasn't just the buildings, streets and homes - the residents had to bounce back too. Their spirit has made this town the place tourists from around the world know and love. But they had deep wounds that needed to heal.
Denise Herbert was one of those people. She was displaced after Katrina and had to move to Atlanta with her children. Herbert wanted to bring her 82-year-old mother, Ethel, but she was missing.
The 610 Stompers dance with Brooke Baldwin in New Orleans on New Year's Eve.
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Post by: Filed under: Brooke Baldwin • Kathy Griffin • New Orleans • New Year's Eve 2013 |
Hurricane Isaac's floodwaters are reminiscent of Katrina. See the latest in Mississippi, where a dam threatens to breach.
CNN Wire Staff
New Orleans, Louisiana (CNN) - Calling the federal response to Hurricane Katrina "a shameful breakdown in government," President Barack Obama said Sunday as rebuilding continues, officials are looking ahead to avoid a repeat when future disasters strike.
Speaking at Xavier University of Louisiana in New Orleans to mark the fifth anniversary of Katrina, Obama said construction of a fortified levee system to protect the city is underway and will be finished by next year, "We should not be playing Russian roulette every hurricane season," he said.
"There is no need to dwell on what you experienced and what the world witnessed," the president said, speaking to a crowd that included current New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu and members of Louisiana's Congressional delegation.
"We all remember it keenly - water pouring through broken levees; mothers holding their children above the waterline; people stranded on rooftops begging for help; and bodies lying in the streets of a great American city," Obama said. "It was a natural disaster but also a man-made catastrophe; a shameful breakdown in government that left countless men and women and children abandoned and alone."
Tom Foreman | BIO
AC360° Correspondent
Anderson Cooper | BIO
AC360° Anchor
Tom Foreman | BIO
AC360° Correspondent
Editor's note: Were government promises to rebuild New Orleans kept? CNN's Anderson Cooper returns to the Gulf Coast to see what has changed since Hurricane Katrina. Don't miss "In Katrina's Wake," an "AC360°" special at 10 p.m. ET Thursday on CNN.
New Orleans, Louisiana (CNN) - We're cutting across the open water to the steady growl of a Coast Guard boat's twin engines. The heat index is somewhere between 100 and 1,000 degrees. Sure, you could cook an egg on the deck, but in this heat who'd want to?
It seems about right, since I've come to see what spurred some of the hottest words in the whole post-Katrina blame game: the flood protection system. Specifically, I'm here to look at the improvements that have been made since the storm, and to say they are substantial would be like saying the Superdome is a nice-size room.
Col. Robert Sinkler chats easily as we travel toward cranes, pilings, and massive concrete structures buzzing with workers in the ridiculous heat. "We're doing about 15 to 20 years of construction work in about 36 months," says Sinkler, commander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Hurricane Protection Office.
Liz McCartney and Zack Rosenburg
Special to CNN
When we started thinking about the contents of this piece, our first thought was to highlight all of the progress, accomplishments and successes that the St. Bernard Project has achieved since Katrina.
We thought of numbers: 302 - the number of homes that the St. Bernard Project has rebuilt; 85 - the number of residents who utilize our free evidenced-based clinical services at our Center for Wellness and Mental Health each week.
We thought of all of those who have made it possible: 25,000 volunteers; nearly 1,000 AmeriCorps members; companies like Entergy, Patron Tequila, KPMG, GE and United Way, and citizens like Ari Mittleman, who has made 20 volunteer trips over the past four years, and the Solon family from Massachusetts, who has raised enough funds to move three families home and who spent the summer volunteering with the project.
© 2012 Cable News Network. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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