Alexandria, LA (1/1/2024) – According to the Alexandria Police Department, a 13-year-old was struck by celebratory gunfire.
On Monday, January 1, 2024, at approximately 12:13 AM, the Alexandria Police Department responded to the 2500 block of Llewellyn Drive about a 13-year-old juvenile who had been inadvertently struck by celebratory gunfire.
The juvenile was transported to a local hospital for treatment. The juvenile’s condition is not known.
There was no word on any suspect.
Many Cenla residents took to social media to express their concerns regarding celebratory gunfire. A Natchitoches resident said:
If you were shooting 9mm hollow points last night I found this one on my kitchen floor. You can Swing by and pick it up when you come to repair my roof. #EverythingThatGoesUpMustComeDown#2024 #HappyNewYear.
Chris Brown
Another Natchitoches resident said:
I scanned my front yard, constantly counting my children back and forth while they played with their small fireworks close to our porch, praying that none of them “fell”! But it got to the point I had to bring them inside…
— Laci Rai Salley
An Alexandria resident made the following statement on the neighborhood’s Facebook Page:
“I’m writing this post because last night wasn’t “normal.” The following words are factual but also very emotional, so please refrain from reading or commenting if you don’t want to engage with empathy. Thank you. ************* Last night was the scariest experience of our entire lives. At the corner of Elm and Hill, we were surrounded by hundreds or maybe thousands of rounds of gunfire with increasingly heavy artillery. Over a period of hours we listened as countless dollars worth of bullets of all sizes were discharged into our neighborhood. As the ammo got larger and the sounds deeper, we decided to call the police. The dispatcher explained that it was happening all over our area and that officers were scrambling to respond to hundreds of calls. She also said that lots of people had been shot and that emergency responders were overwhelmed and spread too thin. I told her that I wouldn’t have even bothered to call if it were normal guns. These were much bigger and heavier than the gunfire we’d heard in our block before. She said they could hear it from inside the police station a few blocks away and that it was clearly heavy-grade weapon with seemingly unlimited ammunition supplies. Her calm and sad voice wrecked me. About 15 minutes later, we heard a police siren sound for about 20 seconds, then never heard or saw law enforcement again. There’s no way to explain what we heard and felt other than saying it felt like we were in a war zone, surrounded on every side by machine guns and handguns discharging over and over and over. There was no one coming to save us. All the while, people were shooting off firecrackers and Roman candles, seemingly oblivious to the shotgun/other shells that had nowhere else to go but down on their heads. My heart was filled with terror and is now simply broken into a million pieces. I’m writing this because I don’t know what else to do. I’m writing this because I want others to know this isn’t normal, even if it’s happened in this neighborhood before. Every community in America faces some form of challenge, but not everyone sounded like a war zone in the early hours of 2024. -- Garden District Updates, Alexandria, LA
The incident remains under investigation.
If anyone has any information about this incident or any other type of crime in the Alexandria area, please get in touch with the Alexandria Police Detective Division at (318) 441-6416 or APD Dispatch at (318) 441-6559. You may also email information to detectives at [email protected].
For a cash reward, call Crime Stoppers of CenLa at (318) 443-7867. The Crime Stoppers P3 Tipster App can also be downloaded to leave tips and get a claim number for a cash reward at www.p3tips.com/community/mobile.
