Word: murderings
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...familiar scenario. As a juvenile, Harris was arrested more than a dozen times, according to the Houston Chronicle. When he was 16, he was charged with killing a 24-year-old in the courtyard of a housing project. A grand jury indicted Harris as an adult on first-degree murder charges, but then two years went by while the court considered his mental competency. In time, the D.A.'s office dropped the charges after a key witness's testimony was deemed inadmissible. Harris went free in June 2004 and, less than a month later, was rearrested on a weapons charge...
Finally, he was hit with another murder charge after the Central City shooting in May 2005. But on Aug. 22, a week before Katrina, the D.A.'s office dropped that charge too, after a witness refused to cooperate. "Without a witness, we can't prosecute a case," says New Orleans D.A. Eddie Jordan. Since Harris was still facing an aggravated-battery charge, he remained in jail through the storm, getting transferred to a cell in Shreveport, La. Then, on Nov. 3, on orders from a court judge, he was again released to await a future hearing date. Harris walked...
...December, the killings hit a peak in Houston, as evacuees were implicated in 11 murders. As if on cue, B-Stupid Harris resurfaced, according to Houston police, who said he was wanted for questioning in connection with the murder of a New Orleans evacuee--shot to death at a freeway intersection at 4:20 a.m. on Dec. 17 after a fight at a nearby pool hall. Harris' name would become familiar to the entire Houston police department. "Harris was the axle at the center of our wheel. He kept coming up," says Sergeant Brian Harris, a homicide investigator with...
Violence picked up around the country at the same time. In January, three New Orleans evacuees were accused of killing two men after a fight at a music hall in Oklahoma City. A juvenile evacuee was charged with accessory to murder in Baton Rouge after a man was found shot dead in the street. In general, New Orleans criminals seemed reluctant to break into the drug market in their new towns. Instead, they dealt to their old customers in a new place. Houston, in particular, had long been a distribution point for drugs coming from Central and South America into...
...Harris arrest was a triumph for Riley, who says locals have been more cooperative since Katrina. But there are familiar, depressing signs too. As TIME was first to report, the murder rate has picked up again in New Orleans and may approach 2004 levels before the year is out. So far, 33 people have been murdered this year--almost half of them in the month of April alone. A man assaulted two women in a bar in the French Quarter last week, and then shot and killed a man who came to their aid, police say. Today there...