They found George D. Carter III shot dead in the middle of Piety Street in the Desire neighborhood, just as a fine fall morning dawned.
Only 15 years old, Carter had already made a big impression in his native city, working since the age of seven with the group Kids Rethink New Orleans Schools, where he helped advocate for more meaningful education and healthier food in the city’s school system. He had just started an internship with a legal organization that provides support to prisoners on death row.
Carter’s death, on October 21, attracted more attention than most of this year’s murders in New Orleans because he was such a bright star. Murder, in general, is an old, worn-out story in this city. For nearly 20 years, New Orleans has had one of the highest homicide rates in the nation, often achieving the sad distinction of being number one.
The real tragedy, of course, is not the numbers, but the people behind them—the men, women, and children who have been cut down. Too often, their stories are glossed over or forgotten, but they were all, like young George Carter, human beings with full and complex lives. People like Alfred Johnson, 26, who was targeted on the street in Central City, or 11-year-old Arabian Gayles, who was killed while sleeping in her bed when bullets came through the wall, or the unidentified woman whose body was found in a vacant lot in Treme just a couple of hours after Carter’s.
[For more of this story, written by Sarah Goodyear, go to http://www.citylab.com/crime/2...-new-orleans/383997/]
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