Article Image and Credit(s): Law enforcement officers work at the St. Germain Apartments in the 2200 block of Manhattan Boulevard in Harvey, La., Monday, July 17, 2023. A man suspected of killing two former co-workers earlier in the day at a shipyard near New Orleans was shot to death hours later by deputies in an afternoon gunfight at the apartment complex. (Brett Duke/The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate via AP)
Jefferson Parish Sheriff Joe Lopinto said deputies answered a call around 1 p.m. about gunshots at a shipyard in the Harvey area. Two men were found dead there.
The suspect, a former employee of the shipyard, was found around 2:45 p.m. at the Harvey apartment complex where he lived. Lopinto said the man spotted deputies and began running. As the deputies drew nearer, he fired a handgun at them. “Numerous” deputies fired back, killing the suspect, said Lopinto, who did not know the exact number of deputies who fired.
The motive for the initial shooting was unclear. Lopinto said it was not immediately known why the man was no longer employed at the shipyard.
The man was tracked to the apartment after deputies received information about a car he left the scene in. The car turned out to belong to the suspect’s mother, who had picked him up when he called her from the shipyard, according to Lopinto. The woman, who did not know about the shooting, was later stopped by deputies who spotted the car.
“She said she had just picked him up and brought him to an apartment here,” Lopinto said during a news conference at the complex.
Nobody else was hurt during the gunfire exchange with the suspect, although bullets did hit apartments. “We have checked those apartments. Nobody else was hurt,” Lopinto said.
Resident Charles Robert Talford III, 75, told The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate that he was leaving his apartment when he noticed law enforcement vehicles in the parking lot.
“Then I heard shots,” Talford said. “I heard pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop.”