On November 7, 2014, a 22-year-old African-American woman named Shanda Monique Henderson was killed in New Orleans, Louisiana. Henderson, a licensed Certified Nursing Assistant and mother of two, was a graduate of Southern Vance High School and had attended Shaw University. Her death was one of many gun-related homicides that occurred in the city that year.
For nearly a decade, the case of Shanda Henderson's death remained unsolved.
The lack of answers left her family and community searching for justice. The investigation into her killing was ongoing, but no suspects had been publicly identified, and no arrests had been made. The circumstances surrounding her death were not widely reported, leaving a void of information for those who mourned her.
In a significant breakthrough nearly ten years after her death, the New Orleans Police Department's Cold Case Unit identified a suspect in September 2024. Gordon Lewis, who was 33 years old at the time he was named a suspect, was identified as the individual allegedly responsible for Henderson's homicide. At the time of this development, Lewis was already incarcerated in the Louisiana Department of Corrections on unrelated charges. An arrest warrant was issued for Lewis, charging him with second-degree murder. Authorities planned to extradite him to Orleans Parish to face the new charge.
