Victim in Bourbon Street shooting was Baton Rouge tattoo artist
NEW ORLEANS — The man killed in a mass shooting Sunday on Bourbon Street in New Orleans has been identified as Demontris Toliver, a 25-year-old New Orleans native who lived and worked as a tattoo artist in Baton Rouge, reports CBS affiliate WWL.
Friends said Toliver was visiting his hometown to celebrate his birthday. During a press conference, Mayor Mitch Landrieu said Toliver attended the city’s arts-focused high school.
Kyle Wedberg, the school’s CEO, said in a statement that the city’s community has “one less artistic voice, one less difference-maker in our midst.”
“Demontris Toliver did what any other 25-year-old from New Orleans does on Thanksgiving, or their birthday--or on Mardi Gras or Jazzfest or for a family event--he came home,” Wedberg said. “It was during this most banal and simple of acts that Demontris was shot and killed on Bourbon Street early Sunday morning, guilty of nothing besides wanting to come home to celebrate.”
Toliver was the lone fatality in a shooting that wounded nine others at around 1:30 a.m. Sunday along New Orleans’ crowded Bourbon Street.
Two people were arrested at the scene for carrying illegal firearms, according to New Orleans police. One of the arrested suspects was wounded in the shooting, the other was not involved in the shooting, police say.
It is not clear if the person who was wounded is suspected of shooting others.
