Akein Scott Identified By Police As Suspect In New Orleans Mother's Day Parade Shooting

NEW ORLEANS — Police identified a 19-year-old man as a suspect in the shooting of nearly 20 people during a Mother's Day parade in New Orleans, saying several people had identified him as the gunman.

Police Superintendent Ronal Serpas said they were looking for Akein Scott of New Orleans. He said it was too early to say whether he was the only shooter.

"We would like to remind the community and Akein Scott that the time has come for him to turn himself in," Serpas said at a news conference outside of police headquarters.

A photo of Scott hung from a podium in front of the police chief. "We know more about you than you think we know," he said.

The mass shooting showed again how far the city has to go to shake a persistent culture of violence that belies the city's festive image. Earlier, police announced a $10,000 reward and released blurry surveillance camera images, which led to several tips from the community.

"The people chose to be on the side of the young innocent children shot instead of on the side of a coward who shot into the crowd," Serpas said.

Angry residents said gun violence – which has flared at two other city celebrations this year – goes hand-in-hand with the city's other deeply rooted problems such as poverty and urban blight. The investigators tasked with solving Sunday's shooting work within an agency that's had its own troubles rebounding from years of corruption while trying to halt violent crime.

"The old people are scared to walk the streets. The children can't even play outside," Ronald Lewis, 61, said Monday as he sat on the front stoop of his house, about a half a block from the shooting site. His window sill has a hole from a bullet that hit it last year. Across the street sits a house marked by bullets he said were fired two weeks ago.

"The youngsters are doing all this," said Jones, who was away from home when the latest shooting broke out.

Video released early Monday shows a crowd gathered for a boisterous second-line parade suddenly scattering in all directions, with some falling to the ground. They appear to be running from a man in a white T-shirt and dark pants who turns and runs out of the picture.

Police were working to determine whether there was more than one gunman, though they initially said three people were spotted fleeing from the scene. Whoever was responsible escaped despite the presence of officers who were interspersed through the crowd as part of routine precautions for such an event.

Serpas said Scott has previously been arrested for resisting arrest, possession of a firearm and narcotics charges. It was not immediately clear whether he had been convicted on any of those.

Serpas said ballistic evidence gathered at the scene was giving them "very good leads to work on."

Witness Jarrat Pytell said he was walking with friends near the parade route when the crowd suddenly began to break up.

"I saw the guy on the corner, his arm extended, firing into the crowd," said Pytell, a medical student.

"He was obviously pointing in a specific direction; he wasn't swinging the gun wildly," Pytell said.

Pytell said he tended to one woman with a severe arm fracture – he wasn't sure if it was from a bullet or a fall – and to others including an apparent shooting victim who was bleeding badly.

Three gunshot victims remained in critical condition Monday, though their wounds didn't appear to be life-threatening. Most of the wounded had been released from the hospital.

It's not the first time gunfire has shattered a festive mood in the city this year. Five people were wounded in a drive-by shooting in January after a Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade, and four were wounded in a shooting after an argument in the French Quarter in the days leading up to Mardi Gras. Two teens were arrested in connection with the MLK shootings; three men were arrested and charged in the Mardi Gras shootings.

The shootings are bloody reminders of the persistence of violence in the city, despite some recent progress.

Last week, law enforcement officials touted the indictment of 15 people in gang-related crimes, including the death of a 5-year-old girl killed by stray gunfire at a birthday party a year ago.

The city's 193 homicides in 2012 are seven fewer than the previous year, while the first three months of 2013 represented an even slower pace of killing.

Leading efforts to lower the homicide rate is a police force that's faced its own internal problems and staffing issues. At about 1,200 members, the department is 300 short of its peak level.

Serpas, chief since 2010, has been working to overcome the effects of decades of scandal and community mistrust arising from what the U.S. Justice Department says has been questionable use of force and biased policing. Mayor Mitch Landrieu and Serpas have instituted numerous reforms, but the city is at odds with the Justice Department over the cost and scope of more extensive changes.

Landrieu's administration initially agreed to a reform plan expected to cost tens of millions over the next several years. But Landrieu says he wants out now because Justice lawyers entered a separate agreement with Orleans Parish Sheriff Marlin Gusman over the violent and unsanitary New Orleans jail – funded by the city but operated by Gusman.

The site of the Sunday shooting – about 1.5 miles from the heart of the French Quarter – showcases other problems facing the city. Stubborn poverty and blight are evident in the area of middle-class and low-income homes. Like other areas hit hard by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the area has been slower to repopulate than wealthier areas. And Landrieu's stepped up efforts to demolish or renovate blighted properties – a pre-Katrina problem made worse by the storm – remain too slow for some.

Frank Jones, 71, whose house is a few doors down from the shooting site, said the house across from him has been abandoned since Katrina. Squatters and drug dealers sometimes take shelter there, he said.

A city code inspector, who declined to be interviewed, was there Monday

"It's too late," Jones said. "Should have fixed it from the very beginning. A lot of people are getting fed up with the system."

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Associated Press reporter Stacey Plaisance contributed to this story.

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Christopher Dorner, Former LAPD Officer, Identified As Suspect In Murder Of Monica Quan, Keith Lawrence

IRVINE, Calif. — Police said Wednesday night they are looking for a former Los Angeles police officer suspected in the shootings of a Cal State Fullerton basketball coach and her fianc?, and they say the man is armed and dangerous.

Former LAPD officer and U.S. Navy reservist Christopher Jordan Dorner is a suspect in the killings of Monica Quan, 28, and Keith Lawrence, 27, who were found shot to death in their car at a parking structure Sunday night, Irvine police Chief David L. Maggard said at a news conference.

Maggard says Dorner, who was an LAPD officer until his dismissal in 2009, implicated himself in the killings with a multi-page manifesto he wrote that was obtained by police. Maggard gave no further details on the manifesto or its contents.

Police do not know Dorner's whereabouts, but his last address was in La Palma, Calif.

Maggard said authorities were seeking the public's help in finding the suspect, and encouraged anyone who sees him to immediately call 911.

"We have strong cause to believe Dorner is armed and dangerous," Maggard said.

Police said he may be driving a blue, 2005 Nissan Titan pickup truck.

The chief said the LAPD and FBI are assisting in the search.

Maggard took no questions during the brief news conference.

Quan, an assistant women's basketball coach at Cal State Fullerton, is the daughter of a former LAPD captain, Randal Quan, who retired in 2002 and later worked as chief of police at Cal Poly, Pomona.

Lawrence, her fianc?, was a public safety officer at the University of Southern California.

Autopsies showed both were killed by multiple gunshot wounds in the parking structure at their condominium in Irvine, Orange County sheriff's spokesman Jim Amormino said earlier Wednesday.

The killings brought mourning and disbelief at three college campuses, Fullerton, USC, and Concordia University, where the two met when they were student athletes.

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Remains Of U.S. Airman From '46 Crash Identified, To Be Laid To Rest

On Nov. 1, 1946, a B-17 Flying Fortress on a flight from Naples to an airfield outside London slammed into the Mont Blanc mountain range with such force that the wreckage and remains of its eight airmen were scattered over a wide area on both sides of the Italian-French border.

Eight months later, the mountain known as the Aiguilles des Glaciers started to give up the wreckage and dead in a process that continued for more than three decades.

The body parts were interred at Arlington National Cemetery under a tombstone bearing the names of all those lost.

Now, thanks to DNA testing, some of the remains have been identified as those of Staff Sgt. Zoltan Joseph Dobovich, originally of Riegelsville, Bucks County.

They were returned Monday to Dobovich's family in a ceremony at Philadelphia International Airport after a flight from the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory in Honolulu.

Veterans belonging to the Patriots Guard and Warriors Watch provided a motorcycle escort for the hearse on the trip to the funeral home in Mount Holly.

A military funeral is set for Thursday at the Brig. Gen. William C. Doyle Veterans Cemetery in North Hanover Township, Burlington County, and Gov. Christie has ordered the U.S. and New Jersey flags to fly at half staff at state facilities in Dobovich's honor.

Carlton Dobovich, the airman's nephew, who was born after Sgt. Dobovch died, said the family was grateful that his remains had been identified.

"It really feels good knowing he's been identified and we'll have him close so we can visit him," he said.

Carlton's father, Anthony, a World War II veteran who died in 2006, is buried in the same cemetery.

His father and uncle were very close as boys, and Anthony Dobovich would be "delirious" if he were alive to learn his brother's remains finally had been identified, Carlton Dobovich said.

Zoltan Dobovich was the youngest of five children, the nephew said. Their parents were Hungarian immigrant farmers, and their father died when Zoltan was a young boy.

Zoltan Dobovich was 18 when he joined the Army in Allentown on Dec. 7, 1943, the second anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack.

After serving in the infantry, he joined the Army Air Corps as a radioman during the war.

It was in that position that he boarded the postwar flight from Naples to the Bovingdon airfield northwest of London. Also on board were Cols. Ford L. Fair, chief of staff of the European Air Transport Service, and Hudson H. Upham, assistant chief of staff for traffic for the service, who was listed as the pilot on the flight manifest.

The purpose of the predawn flight remains unknown, and Carlton Dobovich said his efforts to get an answer have been unsuccessful.

After the plane failed to arrive at Bovingdon, it was reported missing.

An air search for the missing plane was called off after 18 days, according to the European-based Committee for the Commemoration of the Crew of the B-17 of the Aiguilles des Glaciers.

An inquiry established that the plane was about 90 miles off course when it hit the mountain for reasons unknown.

In July 1947, a French army alpine unit chanced upon the crash site. It recovered documents and the remains were interred that October at Arlington.

Between 1972 and 1988, as the glacier atop the mountain retreated, additional wreckage and remains were recovered on the Italian side of the border.

DNA testing recently established that some of the remains belonged to the 21-year-old Dobovich.

Carlton Dobovich said the match was made from Barbara Rice, a cousin in Georgia whom they had not known existed.

In an e-mail, Francis Raout, a young soldier in the French unit that found the wreckage in 1947, said he was grateful to have "rendered service" to the nation "whose sons liberated France."

"I would never have thought that in 2012 I could offer my sincere condolences to the family of Zoltan Dobovich," he said.

Also killed in the crash were Maj. Lawrence L. Cobb, the copilot; Lt. Alfred D. Ramirez, the navigator; Master Sgt. John E. Gilbert, flight engineer; Technical Sgt. William S. Cassell, assistant radio operator; and Staff Sgt. William A. Hilton, assistant engineer.

Carlton Dobovich said he had been informed that the remains of only four airmen have been identified.

The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office, which is in charge of identifying military remains, did not respond Monday to a request for additional information.

Besides his nephew, Dobovich's survivors who are still alive include his niece Rosalie Baker and nephew Joseph Dobovich.

A visitation is set for 7 to 9 p.m. Wednesday at Perinchief Chapels, 438 High St., Mount Holly. A memorial service will be held 11 a.m. at the funeral home. Interment with military honors will follow at the Doyle cemetery.

--

Contact Joseph Gambardello

at 856-779-3844 or jgambardello@phillynews.com. ___

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