Drive-By Shooting In New Orleans Kills 2

Another day, another piece of news you'd rather not lay your eyes on — a shooting in New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward neighborhood killed two people and left five more injured Sunday night. One man and one 16-year-old high school student were killed in the attack, and the five other people shot aren't out of the woods just yet — according to NBC News, a woman and two young boys (ages two and four) are in critical condition, while another woman and a 13-year-old are in stable condition.

It was a flash of violence in a community that's become all too familiar with such things. Crime, poverty, and the attendant problems that go along with them have been an ongoing struggle for the Lower Ninth Ward and its residents, especially following the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. No section of New Orleans was hit quite as badly by the fateful hurricane than the Lower Ninth, as the storm combined with the city's failing levees brought about widespread destruction.

In recent years, some progress has been made in terms of reconstruction — far better than thing were when former mayor (and now convicted felon) Ray Nagin was running things, but still a far cry from acceptable. The census, in a way, tells the tale — since 2000, the Lower Ninth has lost greater than 75 percent of its total population.

While no suspects have been found, and how it all went down is still pretty unclear, New Orleans Police Department spokesperson Frank Robertson detailed what they know. According to WWL-TV New Orleans, Robertson said witnesses spotted a dark-colored car driving away from the scene of the shooting — "possibly a Honda Accord," per WWL_TV's reporting — after a porch-full of people came under fire.

The shooting capped off an awful week for violence in the Lower Ninth Ward, with a death toll of five killed and 11 injured throughout Saturday and Sunday.

In simple terms, it was the sort of randomly bloody couple days that so often go overlooked in cities all across the United States. The mundane, everyday nature of these sorts of outbursts of violence are a kind of constant, unrelenting trauma for countless communities. And in this case, the Lower Ninth has suffered a heavy toll — two lives lost, and more hanging in the balance.

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