The Orleans Parish Coroner’s Office on Friday morning identified the 1-year-old girl fatally shot Thursday night in as Londyn Samuels of Harvey.
The coroner’s office hadn’t yet conducted an autopsy, so no details were available about the number or location of gunshot wounds.
Police have not identified the girl’s babysitter who was hospitalized after being shot in her back. But her grandparents in an interview Friday morning said they saw her in the hospital and she was alert. They held her hand.
Londyn Samuels,1, of Harvey was fatally wounded in the 2800 block of South Saratoga Street Thursday night.
They said their granddaughter is a friend of the dead child’s father and that she sometimes would watch the little girl.
The toddler and her babysitter were walking in the 2800 block of South Saratoga Street when shots rang out just before 8:20 p.m. Thursday, the New Orleans Police Department said.
Police were searching for two male suspects, said police spokeswoman Hilal Williams. One adult male and two adult females were taken in for questioning during a four-hour SWAT standoff Friday morning at an apartment building in the 2800 block of LaSalle Street. Police are still searching for another man.
NOPD Superintendent Ronal Serpas, who was on the scene shortly after the shooting, said police had no motive in the case and could not say if the woman and child were the intended targets. Serpas then made a public plea for those with information on the shooting call authorities.
We have very little to work with,” Serpas said. “Please, if you know anything, we know this happened at a time during the evening when people were one the street, say something, you can call Crimestoppers, you don’t have to give your name. This is a time when the people and city of New Orleans have to rally together and say this is unacceptable.”
Those that shot Londyn and her babysitter are urged to turn themselves into the police immediately,” Danatus N. King, president of the New Orleans branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said in a statement. “If they are afraid, contact the NAACP and the NAACP will accompany them during the process.”
