New Orleans Citizen Crime Watch

Lawyer: 3 lied about Shavers killing
Motives of three key witnesses questioned
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
By Gwen Filosa
The Times-Picayune

The three teenage girls who say David Bonds fired the fatal bullet into Dinerral Shavers’ car on Dec. 28, 2006, are lying to frame Bonds and protect their 6th Ward neighbors who are responsible for the killing, public defenders told an Orleans Parish jury Tuesday.

Bonds is standing trial this week at Orleans Parish Criminal District Court in the death of Shavers, 25, the drummer of the Hot 8 Brass Band who was shot dead after picking up his teenage stepson in the 2200 block of Dumaine Street.

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Related:

Live Blog: State’s eyewitneses testify in Shavers’ trial

No charges are filed in Carnival shooting
Five people injured after Endymion
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
By Laura Maggi
The Times-Picayune

The Orleans Parish district attorney’s office last week refused to press forward with attempted murder charges against two teenagers accused of shooting into a crowd of Carnival revelers on Canal Street after the Endymion parade, citing witness problems common in New Orleans criminal cases.

Prosecutors decided against charging Inassio Farria, 17, and Bryson McDonald, 18, because of a “a lack of victim-witness cooperation and other evidentiary issues,” Dalton Savwoir, a spokesman for District Attorney Keva Landrum-Johnson, said Tuesday. Savwoir would not elaborate on the witness problems.

Farria and McDonald were arrested not long after the Feb. 2 shooting at the corner of Canal and Baronne streets, which happened shortly after the Endymion parade had passed. Five people were injured, including an 18-year-old man the New Orleans Police Department has publicly identified as the “intended victim.” Three of the other victims, including two women from out of state, were hit in their legs. Another man was struck in the elbow.

A large number of officers descended onto the chaotic scene, which was littered with parade debris and people milling around after the parade. Police leaders estimated more than 60 officers had been stationed on the Canal Street neutral ground near the scene during the parade.

According to a police report by 8th District Detective Louis Labat, five officers caught Farria and McDonald, who were running from the shooting scene and pointed at by people in the crowd.

Last month during a preliminary court hearing, defense attorneys for Farria and McDonald questioned whether police had nabbed the correct men, pointing out that no weapons were recovered and the department hadn’t performed gunpowder residue tests on the suspects.

“The case against them was very weak,” said Dylan Utley, who represented McDonald. “We felt they were swept up in the chaos and misidentified.”

Police Department Assistant Superintendent Marlon Defillo called the DA’s decision to refuse the case a “disappointment.”

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Suspect indicted in 2 murder cases
He’s accused in death of N.O. police officer
The Times-Picayune
Friday, March 14, 2008
By Susan Finch

An Orleans Parish grand jury Thursday indicted a 19-year-old Harvey man on charges of murdering two people last fall, one of them a longtime New Orleans police detective, and trying to kill a third person.

The grand jury accused Chris Dillon of first-degree murder in the shooting death of Sgt. Thelonious Dukes, a 19-year New Orleans Police Department veteran, early on Oct. 13, 2007, at Dukes’ home in eastern New Orleans. Dukes, who was 47, died Nov. 9 from his injuries.

In a separate indictment, Dillon was accused of second-degree murder of Andrew Toussaint and attempted second-degree murder of Keith Brady in the 3700 block of South Roman Street at around 6 p.m. on Nov. 20.

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Algiers man is guilty of shooting officer
by The Times-Picayune
Thursday March 13, 2008, 9:46 PM
By Gwen Filosa
Staff writer

A 25-year-old Algiers man single-handedly tried to murder a New Orleans police officer nine months after Hurricane Katrina, leaving the officer paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair, a unanimous jury found Thursday.

After three hours of deliberations at Orleans Parish Criminal District Court — and a four-day trial that included 23 state witnesses and 123 exhibits — the jury found Eddie Harrison III guilty as charged of attempted first-degree murder of a police officer.

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3 charged following teen’s drug death
by The Times-Picayune
Thursday March 13, 2008, 9:58 PM

By Gordon Russell
Staff writer

The federal case against three men accused of providing the heroin that eventually killed 16-year-old Madeleine Prevost in January shifted into higher gear about a month ago when FBI agents paid a visit to her friend Henry Deeb Gabriel III at Boston College. …

On Thursday, Perez, 18, and Battenberg, 27, who have been in prison since mid-February, were charged in a federal bill of information with conspiring to distribute heroin and cocaine.

Battenberg faces an additional charge of selling heroin to someone younger than 21 — apparently Perez. The bill of information says the offense occurred Feb. 15, the day of the sting.

A charge by bill of information rather than grand-jury indictment typically means the defendant has signed a plea agreement. Perez faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison if convicted. For Battenberg, the maximum sentence is 40 years.

That Prevost died from the heroin the two allegedly sold will factor into their sentences.

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Paralyzed NOPD officer identifies his attacker in court
by Gwen Filosa, The Times-Picayune
Wednesday March 12, 2008, 12:11 PM

From the wheelchair he received after getting shot and paralyzed in May 2006, New Orleans Police Officer Andres Gonzalez today told a jury Eddie Harrison III was the man who shot him repeatedly in the face and neck in Algiers.

Harrison, 25, appeared in court today wearing a white dress shirt and tie, his hair in the short twists that Gonzalez said he recalled from the afternoon when he was last able to walk or run.

“Are you ever going to forget his face?” Assistant District Attorney Greg Thompson asked Gonzalez, dressed in his NOPD uniform for Harrison’s trial at Orleans Parish Criminal District Court.

“Never,” replied Gonzalez, who at age 25 was nearly killed after pursuing a passenger who fled a car during a police stop in Algiers Point on May 22, 2006.

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Text messages reveal teen drug culture
by Gordon Russell, The Times-Picayune
Wednesday March 12, 2008, 2:03 PM

Offering a rare peek behind the curtain of the city’s teenage drug culture, an FBI affidavit filed in court Tuesday reveals a series of text messages sent in the hours leading up to the heroin-related death of a Lusher Charter School student, and the panic that followed.

Most chillingly, the messages and other information detailed in the document suggest that Madeleine Prevost’s boyfriend, Henry Deeb Gabriel III, was making efforts to cover up what had happened even before the 16-year-old was pronounced dead on Jan. 6. He was arrested Tuesday.

In a closed detention hearing Tuesday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Louis Moore ordered that Gabriel be imprisoned based on the affidavit and testimony.

Gabriel, 23, who worked at Lusher until December, is the fourth person to be arrested or charged in connection with the death of Prevost, a junior at Lusher whose mother is a social worker at the school.

The affidavit supporting his arrest, filed by FBI Special Agent James Hurley, says that Gabriel and Prevost had “an intimate emotional relationship,” and that they were together the afternoon and evening of Jan. 5, when she snorted the drugs that eventually killed her.

The affidavit says Gabriel got the drugs — heroin and cocaine — through a Lusher student, Diego Perez, 18, who in turn purchased them from David Battenberg, 27. Battenberg and Perez, like Gabriel, have been arrested on the basis of criminal complaints. None has been indicted.

A fourth person, Clinton “South” Rodriguez, has been indicted on a related charge of heroin possession. Rodriguez allegedly was the source of the drugs Battenberg sold to Gabriel and were eventually ingested by Prevost on the fatal night.

The FBI affidavit, bolstered by interviews with Gabriel and Perez as well as a series of text messages among the various parties, paints that night in vivid detail.

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Emotional testimony colors trial of man accused of shooting NOPD officer
WWL-TV
06:32 PM CDT on Tuesday, March 11, 2008
By Katie Moore / Eyewitness News

Emotional testimony colored the trial of a man accused of shooting former police officer Andres Gonzales in May 2006.

The scene in 2006 after NOPD officer Andres Gonzales was shot and paralyzed after a routine traffic stop.

Gonzales’ former partner Rebecca Easley took the stand, recalling the events leading up to the shooting that left Gonzales paralyzed.

Back on May 22, 2006, Gonzales and Easley pulled over a car with black, tinted windows in Algiers Point.

That routine traffic stop over illegally tinted windows ended with Gonzales shot in the face and neck.

“He’s come a long way,” Easley said.

Gonzales is now in a wheelchair, and his former partner of two years is no longer with the NOPD. She quit to take care of her daughter.

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EDITORIAL: Gaming the system
The Times-Picayune
Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Lloyd Burns Jr. manipulated New Orleans’ criminal justice system, lying repeatedly under oath to get a friend — and then himself — acquitted of murder.

Now District Attorney Keva Landrum-Johnson’s office must aggressively go after Mr. Burns to ensure he suffers the consequences of his false testimony — and to send a message to others who might try to abuse the system. …

Mr. LaCaze … was acquitted after Mr. Burns claimed on the witness stand that he had committed the crime. Mr. Burns made at least five confessions to the killing in the past three years, and prosecutors subsequently charged him with second-degree murder.

Then last month, Mr. Burns changed his story. …

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Prolific robber pleads guilty, gets 40 years in prison
by By Gwen Filosa, Times-Picayune
Monday March 10, 2008, 2:08 PM

A New Orleans man Monday pleaded guilty to ten robberies - two at gunpoint, two knifepoint and the rest purse snatchings - and took 40 years in prison rather than face a trial that could have ended with a sentence of more than a century.

Gary Lindsey, 39, admitted to committing ten crimes last spring: six purse snatchings, two counts of armed robbery, and two counts of armed robbery with a firearm.

The latter charge carries 15 to 104 years in prison upon conviction. A standard armed robbery carries 10 to 99 years, while purse snatching is punishable by up to 20 years. …

He went after one woman as she unloaded shopping bags from her car in her driveway on Spruce Street on March 24, 2007. He knocked her to the ground and wrested her purse from her. The woman, a doctor, said she was left with bruises, scrapes and “insufferable pain” in her wrists and hands.

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