5 shot in New Orleans after Martin Luther King parade passes

Gunfire erupted from a vehicle, wounding five people, about 30 minutes after a parade honoring Martin Luther King Jr. passed a New Orleans intersection, police said.

The parade was one of numerous events nationwide honoring the slain civil rights leader, perhaps the most famous modern advocate of peaceful civil disobedience, on the federal holiday created for him.

“It’s the state of affairs in our nation that young men do not heed the words of Martin Luther King Jr.,” New Orleans Police Supt. Ronal Serpas, one of the responding officers, told the website nola.com.

Serpas told WDSU television that a group of six teenage boys or young men was gathered outside a small grocery store near LaSalle Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in the Central City neighborhood when a late-model white sedan, possibly a Nissan or Pontiac, drove past.

The shots were fired from the vehicle about 1 p.m., about half an hour after the annual parade honoring King went by. The shooting did not appear to be related to the parade, officials said.

The car sped off in the direction of the Mississippi River, Serpas told reporters at the scene.

None of the injuries appeared to life-threatening, police said.

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