A great story in the Times-Picayune about how justifiable homicides being up sharply in New Orleans, while the overall homicide rate is down.
One minute, a man and his wife were sitting in their backyard in Algiers. The next, a masked gunman lay dead, the trigger pulled by the husband.
The bloodshed last Wednesday marked the seventh New Orleans homicide this year that police ruled justifiable. Two killings were by police officers. Five were by civilians.
Lovers’ arguments led to two deaths. In another, a friendship dissolved, giving way to anger. And four men shot and killed strangers — other men who, police said, were committing rape, home invasion, armed robbery or pointing a gun at a cop.
As the number of murders in New Orleans has dropped for the last three years, self-defense killings have not. The seven justifiable homicides so far this year is more than double the three committed in 2013, and could match the nine recorded in 2012.
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