In the spring of 2017, a life was tragically cut short on the streets of New Orleans. Lewis Gonzalez, a 45-year-old African American man, was in the St. Claude neighborhood on the evening of Friday, May 12th. It was in the 1100 block of Louisa Street that violence erupted, and Gonzalez was shot multiple times. The injuries he sustained were severe, and he died at the scene. The sudden and brutal nature of his death left a void in the community and launched a homicide investigation by the New Orleans Police Department.
Within days, detectives identified a suspect in the fatal shooting. The New Orleans Police Department publicly named Roosevelt Rumbley, who was 29 years old at the time, as the man they believed was responsible for Lewis Gonzalez's death. A warrant was issued for Rumbley's arrest on a charge of second-degree murder. Authorities released his date of birth as December 15, 1987, and asked for the public's help in locating him. Despite the identification of a suspect, the case has been marked by a lack of public information regarding an arrest.
The trail of information regarding the resolution of this case grows cold after the initial announcement of a suspect. Online records and news reports available in the years following the shooting do not indicate that Roosevelt Rumbley was ever taken into custody. Consequently, details of any potential court proceedings, trial, or conviction in the murder of Lewis Gonzalez remain unavailable. The case was noted in a cold case database, which recorded the victim's first name with the alternative spelling of 'Kewis,' and listed the homicide as unsolved. The lack of a reported arrest leaves the final chapter of this tragic story unwritten and justice for Lewis Gonzalez unaccounted for in the public record.
