James Marquette “Quetty” White, 34, a Black man, was riding his motorcycle through the West Bank on the afternoon of July 31, 2020, when violence found him in unincorporated Westwego, Louisiana. Deputies with the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office were sent toward the area around the Westbank Expressway and Wayne Avenue after reports of gunfire. When they arrived, they found White down on Wayne Avenue with multiple gunshot wounds.
Despite the frantic rush of first responders and the urgency of the scene, he was pronounced dead there, his ride ending on a stretch of roadway that should have been ordinary.
In the earliest days after the shooting, investigators worked the case as a targeted killing on a public street, trying to piece together what happened in the moments before the shots. The details available publicly emphasized how quickly the ambush unfolded and how little was immediately known about the shooter’s identity. The killing left behind a family searching for answers and a community trying to make sense of why a man on a motorcycle was attacked in broad daylight.
As the months passed, the case did not stay frozen in that first, grim uncertainty. More than a year later, investigators made an arrest, booking a man from Bridge City in connection with White’s death. Not long after, authorities announced that a second suspect was also arrested in the same case, signaling that detectives believed the shooting involved more than one person and that the story behind the gunfire was broader than a single trigger pull.
The case eventually moved into the courtroom, where prosecutors sought to prove who was responsible and why. But even with arrests and formal accusations, the legal outcome did not bring a conviction: three people who stood accused in the killing were ultimately acquitted of the murder, leaving White’s death without anyone found guilty in court.
