http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2016/11/2_bourbon_street_shooting_vict.html
2 Bourbon Street shooting victims told family they saw argument before gunfire
Laura McKnight, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune
on November 27, 2016 at 2:09 PM
Two Bourbon Street shooting victims told relatives they saw two men arguing with each other moments before the gunfire erupted early Sunday (Nov. 27). One man started to walk away, family members recounted, then turned back and opened fire.
Twelve hours later after the mass shooting, Jessie Ben of Lafayette was preparing to take her daughter, Brittany Ben, 20, to a hospital to check on the two bullets that remain inside her body. Brittany Ben was struck by five bullets, and her nephew suffered a broken pelvic bone from a gunshot.
“She’s in a lot of pain right now,” Jessie Ben said of her daughter. “She’s in and out of it.”
Jessie Ben said her grandson, Deion Ben, 21, remains in a New Orleans hospital being treated for a gunshot wound to his groin area, she said. “He’s in a lot of pain also,” she said.
One relative who was in New Orleans with Brittany and Deion Ben said she was down the street from them at the time of the shooting. She didn’t hear gunshots but saw people running. Then, she got a phone call telling her that Brittany and Deion had been shot.
This relative, who asked that her name be withheld for her safety, said she ran toward Iberville Street. Brittany Ben was already in an ambulance, but Deion was still on the sidewalk — bloody and barely able to talk. “I was devastated,” the relative said.
Jessie Ben said she got the call after 1 a.m. to hurry to New Orleans as her daughter and grandson, both Lafayette residents who were in New Orleans for the Bayou Classic, had been shot on Bourbon Street. Brittany Ben, who studies nursing at Southern University in Baton Rouge, had been shot five times, including three times in the chest and twice in the arm, Jessie Ben said. Deion Ben, who works at a Lafayette car lot and is Brittany’s nephew, was shot in the groin area, a hit that broke his pelvic bone, Jessie said.
Later Sunday, hospital staff were about to send Deion Ben home. But when he got up and began to get dressed, he started bleeding, requiring the attention of a trauma doctor, Jessie Ben said.
Brittany Ben was treated at a New Orleans hospital and released with two bullets still inside her body, Jessie said. “They let me take her home,” Jessie said.
She planned to take Brittany to another hospital out of concern that the bullets could cause further damage. “We don’t know what those bullets are going to do,” she said.
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Jonathan Bullington contributed to this report.
Latest on Bourbon Street mass shooting: Man killed, other arrested from Baton Rouge; 2 victims from Acadiana
ADVOCATE STAFF REPORT Published Nov 27, 2016 at 3:18 am | Updated Nov 27, 2016 at 2:09 pm (32)
The man killed in Sunday’s Bourbon Street mass shooting in New Orleans has been identified as Demontris Toliver, a 25-year-old tattoo artist who lives and works in Baton Rouge.
Toliver was in town with friends to participate in the festivities associated with the Bayou Classic, Toliver’s friend, 29-year-old Aaron Washington, told The New Orleans Advocate.
Toliver was an innocent bystander and didn’t know the person who shot him, Toliver’s friends told The New Orleans Advocate.
Two other of the 10 victims are from Acadiana, according to KLFY-TV.
One victim, a 20-year-old woman from Lafayette, was shot three times in the chest and twice in the arm, the report says; she’s been released from the hospital and will seek treatment in Acadiana. Another victim, a 21-year-old man from Scott, remains in a New Orleans hospital with internal bleeding after he was shot in the groin.
One of the two men arrested at the scene of the Bourbon Street mass shooting early Sunday morning is 19-year-old Shelvin Gray, of Baton Rouge.
He was booked with illegal carrying of a weapon.
He’s being held on $10,000 bond as of about noon Sunday, according to court records.