I remember the shootout in NO. They cornered him in at the top of a cement elevator shaft and spent a long time shooting at the door, even using an elephant rifle to try and break through the cement wall.
Then he ran out and was shot dead. Believing there was a second shooter in the shaft the police continued to shoot and shoot.
I watched live TV of the police storming the rooftop shooting and shooting. As a result several cops were hit by friendly fire. There was no one else in the elevator shaft.
The shooter used a Ruger .44 mag deerslayer rifle with a short tube magazine. Holds 4 cartridges.
Now some other info I read over the years.
The shooter acted alone, or did he? One man who was shot claimed it was a different person who shot him, and the doctors pulled a .30 cal slug out of his belly. Never heard more about it.
This was before the formation of SWAT teams and may have been the inspiration for them.
My brother was shot by Mark Essex he ended up having to retire from the police department.We had to watch him get shot on TV.
As I recall, when the police stormed the roof top concrete block structure where they thoufght Essex was hiding, one of them fired a machine gun, resulting in a richochet that wounded a fellow officer.
I remember this all very well, especially when my dad stopped and got his 98K Mauser and two boxes of cartridges out of the gun cabinet before leaving for the office. Essex was already up in the Howard Johnsons building by then, so Dad thought the cops might like to borrow the rifle. Turns out, quite a few locals had already made the same offer.
Several of the officers who were shot were right across the street from the hotel, in what is now a public park area that sits in front of the state building and the Louisiana Supreme Court (since relocated). The park's landscaping now includes several tall earthen berms up near the street. I've often thought those were added out of fear of some sort of copycat.