A man was found shot dead inside a vehicle on the 5700 block of Crowder Boulevard in New Orleans East on Wednesday, and police say one person is now in custody. Officers received a call about a person shot in a car around 12:53 p.m., and emergency medical personnel pronounced the victim dead at the scene.
According to WDSU, officers responded to the shooting on the same block where the New Orleans Police Department says it is now investigating a deadly shooting. As reported by WWL-TV, emergency crews called to the scene pronounced the victim dead inside the vehicle before officers took one person into custody. The 5700 block of Crowder Boulevard falls within NOPD's Seventh District, headquartered on Dwyer Road, which covers New Orleans East's primary residential and commercial thoroughfares, as Hoodline has previously reported.
A Block With a Violent History
This is not the first time investigators have converged on this stretch of Crowder Boulevard over a vehicle-involved killing. NOPD News documented a fatal shooting on March 4, 2025, in which officers responding to a fight in the 5700 block found an adult male victim shot dead inside a vehicle along Interstate 10 East just past Crowder Boulevard, an incident that occurred on Mardi Gras Day and triggered a homicide division investigation. Years earlier, on May 15, 2022, a 26-year-old man was shot on the same block and later died at a hospital; that case led to second-degree murder arrests for three suspects by June 2022, and the Orleans Parish Coroner's Office later identified the victim as Mel Green.
Louisiana law bars the Orleans Parish Coroner's Office from publicly identifying a deceased victim until next-of-kin notifications are complete, which is why Wednesday's victim has not yet been named. If the person now in custody is ultimately charged and convicted of second-degree murder, Louisiana Revised Statutes § 14:30.1 mandates a sentence of life imprisonment at hard labor without the possibility of parole, probation, or suspension of sentence.
Citywide Violence Keeps Falling Even as Local Shootings Persist
The Crowder Boulevard shooting comes even as New Orleans continues a historic decline in violent crime. Axios reported in July that the city was on pace to record its lowest annual murder total since at least the 1960s, having tallied 38 homicides through late June. The Metropolitan Crime Commission's weekly bulletin put the parish's homicide count at 55 victims through August 23, a 34 percent decrease from the same period in 2025 and a 71 percent drop from 2022, with nonfatal shootings down 24 percent over the same span.
NOPD News reported that the department logged 20 murder or non-negligent homicide incidents in the first quarter of 2026, down from 27 in the same period of 2025 and 61 in the first quarter of 2023. Investigators are also closing cases far more often than in years past: Officer.com reported that NOPD's homicide clearance rate climbed to 98 percent in 2026, up from 43 percent in 2022, a jump attributed to lower caseloads, improved technology, and multi-agency cooperation as detectives now question the suspect held in Wednesday's shooting.
Part of a Broader Pattern in New Orleans East
Even amid the citywide drop, New Orleans East has continued to see a string of shootings this month. Hoodline reported earlier this month on a shooting that wounded two people along Chef Menteur Highway, another major thoroughfare in the Seventh District, and separately covered a shooting that injured a 16-year-old before dawn in Pines Village. A shooting on Papani Drive near Chef Menteur also left one person wounded earlier in August, with NOPD withholding a motive in that case. NOPD has not released additional details about a motive or the identity of the person in custody in the Crowder Boulevard case, and the investigation remains active.
-4.webp?w=160&h=400&fit=crop&crop=edges)
