Carjacking concerns in and around Irish Channel neighborhood

NEW ORLEANS (WGNO) — One of the most violent crimes people want the New Orleans Police Department to stop is carjackings. There have been multiple carjackings in and around the Lower Garden District, and that has neighbors on edge.

While the NOPD reports that carjackings are down significantly since 2022, it doesn’t feel that way for residents. Especially when multiple carjackings take place in your neighborhood on the same night.

“It is kind of ridiculous. It feels like the old west,” Romaine Hutto said.

Hutto is on high alert after multiple carjackings took place in his neighborhood last week.

“What I do is I make sure that I look in my rearview mirror so nobody’s following me when I go home. If they are, I make the extra block, then I look around my house when I pull up,” Hutto said.

Hutto’s worried especially after the owner of Stein’s deli, Dan Stein, was attacked and carjacked at his business on Magazine Street last week, but that wasn’t the only carjacking.

Another took place in the 2600 block of Laurel Street in the Irish Channel. NOPD has since arrested three juveniles for the Laurel Street incident.

“When they have a pistol, it is kind of hard to defend yourself because they have no regard for life,” Hutto said.

“We really are experiencing a public emergency when it comes to public safety,” said candidate for District 91 State Representative, Madison O’Malley.

“Every door I knock on, every community that I’m in, the number one concern is public safety. We have to call on our state and federal partners. We need to rely on our state level to bring funding here to seriously address our policing,” she said.

O’Malley emphasized, “We can’t continue to live in fear. We have to take this seriously now.”

For neighbors like Hutto, he’s tired of constantly feeling the fear.

“It is out of hand. You have to start holding parents responsible too. It is not like it used to be. It is getting worse and worse,” O’Malley said.

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