Three other people nearly lost their lives at the hands of a suspected spree killer from Metairie who is accused of fatally shooting four men in the New Orleans area this month, authorities said Thursday.
Ballistics evidence links Sean Barrette to roadway shooting attempts on a couple in Kenner on June 5 and a woman in Metairie on Monday, according to Jefferson Parish deputies and Kenner police.
None of the three was injured, police said. But the additional random attacks allegedly committed by Barrette, a 22-year-old former college football player with a recent history of mental health problems, tie him to at least a half-dozen violent incidents in a matter of weeks.
Even more people came close to losing their lives to a suspected spree killer who fatally shot four people in the New Orleans area since the s…
Taken together, the alleged attacks amount to a terrifying phenomenon that experts say is rare even on a nationwide scale: a shooter repeatedly stalking through an area, selecting victims indiscriminately and, based on new details, potentially trying to cover his tracks.
“This is not something that’s normal,” Jefferson Parish Sheriff Joe Lopinto said this week. “The vast majority of murders in any place in this country (involve) known victims, known suspects that have a relationship with each other.”
Lopinto announced Wednesday that Barrette is suspected of beginning his spree on June 5 with a shooting in New Orleans that didn’t claim any victims, followed by a fatal shooting in New Orleans East the following day. A little over a week later, on Monday, Barrette allegedly re-emerged to commit another fatal shooting on a Metairie street, followed by a double slaying about a mile away on Tuesday that led to his arrest.
His capture offered at least some relief to the victims’ families, who had been left to wonder without answer what had led to the violent deaths of Bruce Reed, 61; Idai Cadalzo, 22; Manuel Caronia, 45; and Nicky Robeau, 57.
Reed was killed in New Orleans East. Cadalzo was slain Monday night in Metairie, roughly 18 hours before Caronia and Robeau died together in the same area.
“We took a big breath and said, ‘Thank God,’ ” said Reed’s sister, Biddy Reed. “Now we know nobody else will be hurt.”
In part by using crime-scene ballistics evidence, the Sheriff’s Office arrested Barrette in the Metairie slayings within hours of Tuesday’s killings.
Kenner police said Thursday that the ballistic evidence also led them to suspect that on the night of June 5, Barrette tailed another man and a woman as they drove from Metairie into Kenner on Airline Drive.
Realizing that they were being followed, the couple took Williams Boulevard to get onto Interstate 10, according to police. With Barrette allegedly on their trail, they exited at Loyola Drive, Kenner Police Lt. Michael Cunningham said.
A 22-year-old man has been arrested in connection with three apparently random shooting deaths in Metairie, and ballistics evidence connects h…
As the couple took Loyola toward Lake Pontchartrain, Barrette pulled his SUV alongside them and fired several shots at their car, Cunningham said. The victims then doubled back to the interstate, which they believed allowed them to lose Barrette, who was unknown to them at the time.
The other newly revealed incident involved a woman who was driving eastbound on Interstate 10 near Oaklawn Drive in Metairie about 8:15 p.m. Monday.
Capt. Jason Rivarde, a Sheriff's Office spokesman, said the woman heard noises on the interstate but did not immediately realize that she had been the victim of a shooting. When she got home, however, she discovered damage to her vehicle.
Ballistics evidence from the Kenner and Metairie shootings matched a .40-caliber gun found at Barrette's home when he was arrested on Tuesday, investigators said.
Barrette’s attorney, Paul Fleming of the Jefferson Parish Public Defenders Office, declined to discuss the case when contacted Thursday, saying his own probe into the allegations had only just started.
The Sheriff’s Office is still trying to understand what could have motivated the shootings. As of Thursday, all they could do was point to Barrette’s two recent involuntary commitments into the temporary care of mental health doctors in December and April.
A young motorist shot late Monday in Metairie, two middle-aged men gunned down nearby during a trip to an auto parts store 18 hours later, and…
Previously undisclosed details about what led up to the first of those commitments were contained in a four-page report that the Sheriff’s Office released on Thursday.
According to that report, on Dec. 5, Barrette drove himself to East Jefferson General Hospital to be treated for a bullet wound to his hand. He said he must have wounded himself by falling asleep and rolling over his gun and then described going out the back door of his home — leaving it open — and driving himself to the emergency room.
Barrette and his father signed forms giving permission to Sheriff’s Office deputies to search his home. After entering through the open back door, they spotted a 9-mm pistol and a spent shell casing on the bedroom floor. There was a bullet hole in a wall just above the bedroom window ledge, the Sheriff’s Office said.
Neither the commitment which followed that encounter nor another one in April would have been enough to prevent Barrette from legally obtaining or possessing guns. That would have required a relative, friend or someone otherwise close to Barrette to successfully seek a judge’s order stripping him of that right, which didn’t happen.
Meanwhile on Thursday, details of another encounter raised the possibility that Barrette attempted to keep police off his trail in the middle of the alleged shooting spree.
Matthew Franks, a car salesman in Metairie, said that on June 13 — a week after Reed’s death — Barrette attempted to trade in a tan Nissan Pathfinder SUV for another vehicle. Authorities have said a tan SUV was used in multiple attacks.
Franks had reached a deal with Barrette when he discovered that the SUV was registered in the name of one of Barrette’s family members.
Franks asked Barrette to pursue a title transfer. “I said that with him being a family member, it shouldn’t be that hard,” Franks recalled.
But Barrette was upset and “adamant” about doing the trade without the proper paperwork, Franks said. The deal was called off. Franks said his entire hourlong interaction with Barrette was strained.
“He didn’t seem to have any emotion,” Franks said. “Getting on a personal level with him wasn’t possible.”
Detectives on Thursday had still found no link between Barrette and any of his victims that would explain why he targeted them, Rivarde said.
Investigators have reviewed reams of digital forensics evidence from Barrette’s cellphone without discovering a motive, Lopinto said Thursday. He said Barrette’s parents told the Sheriff’s Office that he appeared to have few friends.
Biddy Reed, the sister of the New Orleans East shooting victim, said her family was too busy preparing for his funeral on Saturday to wonder about Barrette. But she expressed faith in the law enforcement investigation.
“I’m confident that they’re doing all they can,” she said.
A cousin of Cadalzo, Katerine Pagoada, told WWL-TV that Barrette’s arrest within a day of his killing afforded her family mild relief. However, she was still struggling to grasp why her cousin — who moved from Honduras to Louisiana to study — was cut down as he came home from work.
Aside from following the world of professional soccer obsessively, Cadalzo played guitar at his church, shared Christian-themed motivational messages on his Twitter account, and was known to provide help to homeless people, Pagoada said.
“He was just such a good kid,” she added. “I just want people to know he was a man of God.”
As of Thursday, Barrette faces two counts of first-degree murder, one count of second-degree murder, two counts of obstruction of justice and two counts of attempted murder, all from the incidents in Metairie and Kenner.
Lopinto has said he is confident the New Orleans Police Department will eventually book Barrette with Reed’s slaying at Hayne Boulevard and Marquis Street. Late Thursday, the NOPD said Barrette was a person of interest in that case and in the shooting without an injury a day earlier in the 6200 block of Hayne, a few miles away.
Isai Cadalzo. Manuel Caronia. Bruce Reed. Nicky Robeau.
