High-profile killing sparks conversation on safety and violence
18th April 2016 · 0 Comments
With investigators still trying to determine what led to the fatal shooting of former New Orleans Saints defensive standout Will Smith and members of the Who Dat Nation and friends and former teammates searching for answers and a way to say goodbye to Smith, the April 9 high-profile killing has many people in the city and beyond talking about the scourge of crime and violence in New Orleans.
Former Saints teammate Pierre Thomas has remained friends with Smith after their time on the team ended and had dinner with Smith just before he was killed.
After mourning his friend for several days, Thomas broke his silence Tuesday by posting comments about the incident and how the lives of everyone involved were changed by what many have called a senseless act of violence.
“The last few days have been a whirlwind and I am still trying to wrap my head around this whole thing,” Thomas wrote. “I flew out of New Orleans last night and back to Chicago because I couldn’t think straight… I witnessed a close friend, teammate and a man I thought of as one of my big brothers in the NFL shot to death OVER A F—— FENDER BENDER!!! Why!? I just don’t get it… these images that I have in my head will never leave me and I understand that and will have to live with it. I want to thank each and every one of you, my family, friends, fans and the entire Who Dat Nation for all of your thoughts and prayers… But let’s send them instead to Will’s family — his wife and kids who have to be strong during this difficult time.
“When is this s— going to stop?” Thomas continued. “There is so much senseless killing going on in our world, and I’m not saying that I have the answers to fix it… but I am willing to do my part to help and find a solution. My heart is heavy and I wish I could turn back the hands of time, but what is done is done. Sadly my friend
is gone but he will never be forgotten. Rest in peace Will.”
After initially reporting that only one gun, the one used by murder suspect Cardell Hayes, was found at the scene of the crime, NOPD investigators said Tuesday that two additional guns were found — a loaded 9mm handgun found in Will Smith’s Mercedes-Benz SUV and a loaded revolver found in Cardell Hayes’ Hummer vehicle.
Nola.com reported Wednesday that it obtained a video recorded by a bystander on which an unnamed witness can be heard saying that he heard someone say, “Get out of here or I have a gun.”
“And he goes, ‘F— y’all, I got one too,’” the witness continued. “And he grabs the gun and then he shoots him in the back. He’s dead.”
The witness did not indicate who the people he overheard talking were.
Saints head coach Sean Payton, who has publicly professed his love for New Orleans but has not said a great deal about violence in the city in the past, sounded off on gun violence in an interview with USA Today last week after learning of Smith’s death.
“If this opinion in Louisiana is super unpopular, so be it,” Payton said.
Payton made it clear that he thought it was time the country moved beyond strict gun laws and gravitated toward doing away with guns altogether.
“Two hundred years from now, they’re going to look back and say, ‘What was that madness about?’” Payton said. “The idea that we need them to fend off intruders … people are more apt to draw them (in other situations). That’s some silly stuff we’re hanging onto.”
Just two days after Smith’s death, Payton was still processing the tragic incident that took the life of a player he coached in New Orleans for a decade and became a member of his extended family. That might explain why Payton did something one rarely sees NFL coaches do — address an explosive political issue head-on.
“I’m not an extreme liberal,” Payton told USA Today. “I find myself leaning to the right on some issues. But on this issue, I can’t wrap my brain around it.”
“I hate guns,” Payton said.
Although he admitted to having a strong aversion to guns, Payton said it is still hard to embrace gun ownership as a means of protecting one’s loved ones against criminals.
“I’ve heard people argue that everybody needs a gun,” he said. “That’s madness. I know there are many kids who grow up in a hunting environment. I get that. But there are places, like England, where even the cops don’t have guns.”
Payton, who told USA Today that he lives about eight blocks from the scene of the tragic shooting, said he learned of the shooting just after midnight. Since he couldn’t sleep, Payton drove to the scene around 5:45 Sunday morning.
“I wanted to see it,” he said.
After spending time with Smith’s loved ones, friends and former teammates as Racquel Smith underwent surgery, Payton headed home and logged onto the Internet to find out what he could about the weapon used to kill Smith.
“It was a large caliber gun. A .45,” Payton told USA Today. “It was designed back during World War I. And this thing just stops people. It will kill someone within four or five seconds after they are struck. You bleed out. After the first shot (that struck Smith’s torso), he took three more in his back.”
Payton was appalled by how easy it is to gain access to deadly weapons online.
“We could go online and get 10 of them, and have them shipped to our house tomorrow,” he said. “I don’t believe that was the intention when they allowed for the right for citizens to bear arms.”
Payton said the reaction to Smith’s death was decidedly different from the reaction to most victims of Black-on-Black violence in less upscale neighborhoods across the city.
“We don’t hear this noise when something happens in New Orleans East, or in the Lower 9,” Payton said, alluding to predominantly African-American communities. “Now you creep into the Garden District…
“I just know this: Our city is broken.”
Payton said violence in New Orleans — which mostly claims the lives of young Black men — right now is as bad as he has ever seen it over the course of the decade he has spent here.
“It’s like our big little secret,” Payton said. “They don’t want to kill tourism. But right now, it’s like the Wild, Wild West here.”
He added that an NOPD manpower shortage and budget cuts haven’t helped the city to get a handle on crime and violence and said his worst nightmare is to have something as innocent as a traffic accident lead to the taking of someone’s life.
“I think I’m a good driver,” Payton said. “But God forbid if I make a mistake and cut someone off.”
Payton characterized Will Smith as a great team leader but said the two had never discussed the issue of gun control. Still, it was clear given Smith’s fondness for New Orleans that he would not have been happy about the gun violence that the city has grappled with over the years.
“I don’t know how he felt about guns,” Payton said. “I know he loved this city.”
“Smith’s death was, if nothing else, high profile: a 34-year-old former Super Bowl champion, a pillar of the community in post-Katrina New Orleans, in a neighborhood rarely illuminated by police lights. Some believe this was the incident — the right time, place and public figure — that will elicit change in a city where violence is often the nexus of high unemployment, poor public education and a police department short on officers (by the hundreds) and long on response time (often by the hours),” The Washington Post reported in an article last week.
“I will lead off by saying if God can forgive all sins then so can I. Will Smith, my brother and teammate, you will be missed dearly and I still can’t wrap my imagination that you are no longer with us on this earth. This tragedy could have happened to anybody, and that’s what scares and eats at me the most,” former Saints defender Roman Harper wrote on Facebook.
Harper lamented that the senseless violence that has characterized New Orleans for quite some time has now spilled over and touched New Orleans Saints players who were somehow shielded from that kind of danger in the past.
Harper said that in a sense Smith’s killing is a wake-up call that makes it clear that no one is safe in New Orleans and that the kind of tragic incident that took Smith’s life can take place anywhere in the city.
New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu said Wednesday that he “can forgive” Sean Payton for his remarks about New Orleans being a broken city because the Saints coach was still reeling from the death of Will Smith.
The mayor also said he called NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell last week to make sure that national media coverage of Will Smith’s fatal shooting wouldn’t negatively impact New Orleans’ chances of landing another Super Bowl which it is currently pursuing.
French Quarter businesses have also expressed concern about how national media coverage of the incident might impact the tourism industry.
Last year, as the City of New Orleans was reeling from a series of violent incidents in the French Quarter, U.S. Sen. David Vitter said that a high-profile murder might cripple the tourism industry.
Whether that happens remains to be seen, but even some New Orleans natives are skeptical about the city’s national reputation.
On his radio talk show “NFL No Huddle” last week, New Orleans native and former Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Kordell Stewart asked, “How do you ask other players around the National Football League to want to come to the New Orleans Saints and play when you see one who was arguably, probably one of the most stand-up guys in that organization’s history when it comes to his personality and what he meant to the organization, the way he handled himself on the football field?
“How do you lure players to come there when at any point in time you can probably be in an accident similar to what happened to Will Smith?”
In an ESPN interview last week, former St. Augustine High School and LSU standout Tyrann Mathieu told ESPN last week that he limits the time he spends in New Orleans because of the very real threat of physical violence and deadly encounters. “I cannot stay longer than two days and that is part of the reason,” Matthieu, who now plays for the Arizona Cardinals, said. “People know where you are — they know where you’re at and they will find you. They will bump into you and they will try to start any kind of altercation with you. The first thing that they think about is to take your life. They don’t want to ask any questions, they don’t want to talk about anything. They just want to let loose with their gun. That is part of the reason why I fly in and out of town — because it’s so easy for people to find out (where you are). They’ll say, ‘Hey man, Tyrann’s over there,’ ‘Hey man, Will Smith’s at this bar.’
“It’s so easy because it’s such a small city,” Mathieu added. “Everybody knows everybody.”
Another New Orleans native, former LSU and Pittsburgh Steelers standout Ryan Clark, echoed Mathieu’s sentiments about his hometown.
“You understand a threat isn’t just a threat — it’s a promise,” Clark told ESPN. “They will look for you — they will find you.”
“Until elected officials, education leaders, the Black Church and the community at large do more to address the needs of the poorest and least-educated among us, we will continue to see more of these kinds of tragic incidents,” Ramessu Merriamen Aha, a New Orleans businessman and former congressional candidate, told The Louisiana Weekly Thursday.
“How many times have we heard someone say that violence is the language of the dispossessed?” Aha added. “Those who do not value their own lives have no reason to place any value on other people’s lives.
“We can and must do better.”
This article originally published in the April 18, 2016 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
