History has a way of being messy. When people search for information regarding who died in the New Orleans attack, they are often met with a confusing blur of different dates, different streets, and different tragedies. New Orleans is a city where joy and violence occasionally collide in ways that stay in the national consciousness for years.
But let's be clear about one thing right away. If you are looking for a list of fatalities from the infamous 2013 Mother's Day parade shooting—the event most commonly associated with the phrase "New Orleans attack"—the answer is actually a miracle of sorts.
Nobody died.
Nineteen people were shot. Two more were injured in the ensuing chaos. It was a sun-drenched afternoon in the 7th Ward, filled with the sounds of brass and the rhythmic shuffling of a second-line parade. Then, gunfire.
It feels counterintuitive. How can a mass shooting involving 19 victims result in zero deaths? Honestly, it’s one of the most statistically improbable outcomes in the history of American gun violence. It’s also why the details of this specific event are so frequently misremembered or conflated with other tragedies like the UpStairs Lounge arson or the more recent spikes in urban crime.
Understanding the 2013 Mother's Day Shooting
The event took place at the intersection of Frenchmen and North Villere streets. The "attack" wasn't a coordinated terrorist strike or a planned massacre in the traditional sense. It was a flare-up of local gang violence that spilled into a space where hundreds of innocent people were celebrating.
Two brothers, Akein and Shawn Scott, were eventually identified as the gunmen. They didn't care who was in the way.
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The victims ranged in age from 10 to 64. Among those hit were a 10-year-old boy and a 10-year-old girl, both of whom suffered grazing wounds. Ten men and seven women were struck by bullets. The scene was pure horror. You had people in their Sunday best diving under cars and behind brick stoops while the brass band music was still echoing in the air.
Why People Think There Were Fatalities
It’s easy to see why the search for who died in the New Orleans attack brings people here. When 19 people are shot, the brain assumes a high body count. Media coverage at the time was frantic.
Furthermore, New Orleans has endured other horrific events where lives were lost. For instance, the 1973 UpStairs Lounge fire killed 32 people. The 2022 shooting at a high school graduation at Xavier University’s Convocation Center resulted in the death of 80-year-old Augustine Greenwood. Sometimes, these events get tangled in the digital archive.
But the 2013 parade shooting remains a touchstone for New Orleans because it represented a violation of the city's most sacred cultural tradition: the second line.
The Legal Aftermath and the Scott Brothers
If you want to know who "paid" for the attack rather than who died, you have to look at the sentencing.
Akein Scott was only 19 at the time. His brother Shawn was 24. They were members of a group known as the "Frenchmen Derby Boys." They weren't targeting the crowd; they were targeting a rival. That’s the chilling reality of street violence in New Orleans—the "collateral damage" is often the entire neighborhood.
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Both brothers eventually pleaded guilty. They are currently serving 40-year sentences.
There was a lot of talk back then about whether federal charges should apply. The U.S. Attorney’s Office did get involved, looking at racketeering (RICO) charges. This is a common tactic in New Orleans to ensure that violent offenders stay behind bars for a long time, given the complexities and sometimes-fragile nature of state-level prosecutions in Orleans Parish.
The Survivors' Long Road
Just because nobody died doesn't mean there weren't victims.
Many of those 19 people lived with permanent physical disabilities. Some had to undergo multiple surgeries to reconstruct shattered bones or repair internal organ damage. The psychological toll on the 7th Ward was even more profound. For a while, people were scared to go to parades. That is a death of a different kind in a city that breathes through its music.
Other Notable Attacks in New Orleans History
To give a full picture of who died in the New Orleans attack, we have to acknowledge that the term "attack" is broad. Depending on what you are actually looking for, you might be thinking of these specific incidents where fatalities did occur:
- The 1973 Howard Johnson’s Sniper:激 Mark Essex killed nine people, including five police officers, during a standoff at a downtown hotel. This was a targeted, racially motivated attack that paralyzed the city for days.
- The 1973 UpStairs Lounge Arson: 32 people died in an intentional fire at a gay bar in the French Quarter. For decades, this was the deadliest attack on the LGBTQ+ community in U.S. history until the Pulse nightclub shooting.
- The 2024 Carnival Season Violence: More recently, shootings during the lead-up to Mardi Gras have resulted in fatalities, such as the shooting on the Route of the Bacchus parade that killed one person and injured four others.
The "New Orleans attack" is rarely one single event in the minds of the public. It is a mosaic of incidents that reflect the city's ongoing struggle with systemic violence.
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Moving Forward: Lessons from the 7th Ward
New Orleans is a resilient place, but resilience shouldn't be a requirement for survival.
The 2013 shooting led to massive changes in how the New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) monitors second-line parades. There are more undercover officers. There is better communication with the Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs that organize these events.
But the core issue—the availability of firearms and the lack of conflict resolution skills among young men in the city—remains a massive hurdle.
If you are following the crime statistics in New Orleans today, you'll see that while mass casualty events like the Mother's Day shooting get the headlines, it's the daily, one-off homicides that do the most damage. These are the "attacks" that truly claim lives every week.
How to Stay Informed and Stay Safe
If you are visiting New Orleans or live there, it’s easy to get cynical. Don't. The city's culture is worth protecting, but it requires being proactive.
- Follow local independent news: Outlets like The Lens or Louisiana Illuminator often provide much deeper context than the national "if it bleeds, it leads" headlines.
- Understand the geography: Violence in New Orleans is often hyper-local. Knowing which blocks are experiencing active disputes can actually be a life-saving bit of local knowledge.
- Support violence interrupters: Organizations like Cure Violence and local mentors are doing the actual work of stopping the "attack" before it starts by mediating beefs between neighborhoods.
The story of the Mother's Day shooting isn't a story of death. It's a story of 19 people who got a second chance and a city that had to look at itself in the mirror and ask why its celebrations were turning into war zones.
The next time someone asks who died in the New Orleans attack, tell them that thankfully, on that day in May 2013, the answer was no one—but the city's sense of safety took a bullet that it's still recovering from.
To dive deeper into the current state of public safety in the Crescent City, look into the NOPD's transparency portal. It provides real-time data on calls for service and crime trends, which is far more useful than relying on outdated or confused memories of past headlines. Knowing the facts is the first step in changing the narrative of the city.