Shooter still at large after killing cop, woman

NEW ORLEANS — An off-duty police officer and a woman he was helping were shot and killed Friday in a New Orleans suburb, and authorities were searching for a man who had been involved with the woman, officials said.

Police shut the Mississippi River bridge from New Orleans’ east bank to its west bank during the search, causing traffic to back up for miles, because an unidentified man was threatening to jump from it.

Helicopters circled the area, and an Associated Press photographer on the scene saw police lowering a rope to him late Friday afternoon. The man did not grab the rope and police pulled it back. The man then lay down on a girder, which was below the bridge and outside the railing.

The New Orleans Advocate quoted Assistant Gretna Police Chief Anthony Christiana as saying that he’d been told the incident on the bridge might be related to the double shooting, which happened Friday morning outside a school across the Mississippi River from New Orleans.

State Trooper Dustin Dwight said officers on the bridge did not know the man’s name.

Authorities had earlier identified Sylvester Holt, 32, as a person of interest in the double shooting of Westwego Officer Michael Louviere, 26, and Simone Veal, 32, of Marrero, and were searching for him. But Jefferson Parish sheriff Col. John Fortunato could not say whether the man on the bridge was Holt, who authorities say had been romantically involved with Veal.

According to witnesses, the shooter fired at Veal, then chased her car in his vehicle to an intersection where she hit a truck waiting at a light, Fortunato said. Louviere, whose shift on Friday ended at 6 a.m., was on his way home after work when he spied the crash and stopped to help.

The man shot Louviere in the head, then ran around the car and shot Veal as she lay on the ground, Fortunato said. Fortunato didn’t know whether she’d been hit in the earlier shooting.