Ricky “Poppa” Hill, a 34-year-old African American man, died in New Orleans, Louisiana, on December 10, 2020. He had been born December 27, 1985, and by that Thursday night his name would be carried from phone to phone as people tried to make sense of how quickly an ordinary evening could turn into a fatal one.
According to the New Orleans Police Department, the call came in as an aggravated battery by shooting in the 1600 block of Shirley Drive.
Officers arrived to find Hill suffering from multiple gunshot wounds. He was rushed to the hospital, but he did not survive, and he was pronounced dead later that night. In the immediate aftermath, detectives began working the scene and gathering evidence, trying to piece together what happened outside that home and why it happened at all.
In the first official account released about the killing, police did not publicly name a suspect, describe a getaway vehicle, or outline a clear motive. The department stated only that investigators were working to identify the person or people responsible, and that additional details were not yet available. The same release noted that the Orleans Parish Coroner’s Office would formally identify the victim and determine the official cause of death after an autopsy and notification of family.
Publicly available law-enforcement information tied to this homicide does not show an arrest announcement, a named suspect, or any filed charges connected to Hill’s killing in that initial report. What remains in that early record is the stark outline of the night itself—shots reported, a man found wounded, a desperate trip to the hospital, and then the quiet finality of a death investigation beginning. Police asked anyone with information to contact the homicide section or submit tips anonymously through Crime Stoppers.
