At the garland-festooned Avenue Plaza hotel on St. Charles Avenue, a 75-year-old man and his spouse have been asleep in mattress when the hearth alarm sounded round 11 p.m. Thursday. A knock on their door quickly adopted, and a heavyset, bearded man entered the Missouri couple’s hotel room and beat the person to dying whereas his spouse cowered in the hotel toilet.
The random, grisly act—the second involving septuagenarians attacked by strangers inside every week—despatched shock waves by means of a area beset with, and sometimes numbed to, violent crime. Allegedly dedicated by a Slidell man who police say didn’t know the vacationers he terrorized, the deadly beating got here 5 days after a priest, Otis Young, 71, and his pastoral assistant, Ruth Prats, 73, have been kidnapped, crushed and burned past recognition in Covington.
Officers with the New Orleans police division held a press convention Friday to debate particulars of the murder, however tourism and hotel officers didn’t reply to requests for remark, and Avenue Plaza managers threatened to summon safety when a reporter arrived on the hotel to ask questions.
Tourists to New Orleans generated $1.4 billion in income in 2021, in response to a report by University of New Orleans Hospitality Research Center, and over Thanksgiving weekend, greater than 200,000 guests descended on the town. That identical weekend, a mass taking pictures bloodied Bourbon Street’s 200 block, and police made greater than 60 gun arrests.
On Thursday night time, the violent pattern continued when New Orleans police obtained a 911 name from the Avenue Plaza hotel, after employees reported somebody had pulled the hearth alarm and gained entry to a visitor room on the sixth ground, in response to Homicide Unit Captain Ryan Lubrano. The 264-room hotel is a part of the Wyndham hotel chain.
Hotel video surveillance footage revealed Martin Hurtado, 29, taking the elevator to the sixth ground, the place he went door to door knocking, in response to state prosecutors who spoke at Hurtado’s Justice of the Peace courtroom look on Friday. At some level he gained entry to the Missouri couple’s room.
The sufferer’s spouse informed police that when she noticed an unknown man enter their room, she bumped into the toilet, then noticed the person punch her husband in the face. At that time she ran to get assist, prosecutors mentioned.
When police arrived they discovered the sufferer mendacity on the ground, his face bloodied and swollen, and heard Hurtado in the toilet attempting to shut the door with his foot, in response to courtroom paperwork.
Officers apprehended Hurtado, questioned him and booked him into Orleans Justice Center on a cost of second diploma murder. Magistrate commissioner Jay Daniels set bail for Hurtado at $350,000. He appeared on digital camera for the listening to from the jail, his face coated in abrasions.
In 2010, Hurtado pleaded responsible to 2 counts of easy battery in St. Tammany Parish, in response to courtroom information.
Emergency Medical Services took the sufferer to a hospital, the place he was pronounced lifeless round midnight, Lubrano mentioned. The sufferer’s spouse was not bodily injured. Police will launch the person’s id as soon as his household is notified. The suspect had no connection to the sufferer or the hotel, police mentioned.
Anyone with details about the killing could contact NOPD Homicide Detective Miles Guirreri at (504) 658-5300 or name Crimestoppers of Greater New Orleans anonymously at (504) 822-1111.
John Simerman and Sara Pagones contributed to this report.
Man booked with murder in Avenue Plaza hotel killing | Crime/Police
Man booked with murder in Avenue Plaza hotel killing | Crime/Police
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Man booked with murder in Avenue Plaza hotel killing | Crime/Police