Wilbert Bernard Smith, a 61-year-old man from New Orleans, Louisiana, died on September 9, 2022, after violence erupted on a residential stretch of Toledano Street in the Broadmoor area. That evening, New Orleans police were dispatched to the 3000 block after reports of shots fired, and within moments the call tightened into something worse: a shooting with a victim down.
When officers arrived, they found Smith unresponsive in front of a residence, suffering from a gunshot wound, and he was pronounced dead at the scene.
In the first hours after the killing, investigators moved in to collect what the street could still offer—spent evidence, fragments of witness memory, the direction a person fled, the shape of a motive still out of reach. Police described the case as an active homicide investigation and said they were working to identify whoever was responsible, as well as why the shooting happened. The coroner’s office was tasked with formal identification and the official cause of death after autopsy and family notification, while detectives sought tips from anyone who might have seen the shooter or the moments that led up to the gunfire.
Publicly available information tied to this case does not show an arrest or a named suspect in the official police notice issued the night Smith was killed, and that announcement offered no description of a shooter, vehicle, or person of interest. The case was presented as unresolved at that stage, with investigators asking the public to contact the assigned homicide detective or submit information anonymously through Crime Stoppers.
Outside the investigative lane, Smith’s death was also marked in memorial and funeral notices that recorded his dates and the fact of his passing, reflecting a life that began in 1961 and ended in 2022, and a family left to gather for services in the weeks that followed.
