Charles Pettis, a 50-year-old Black man, was shot in the head in New Orleans’ Central City on the morning of February 15, 2018, and he did not survive the wound. The city around him was still shaking off the noise and exhaustion of Mardi Gras week, but in the early hours, the violence turned personal and final, leaving detectives to piece together what happened from the fragments that gunfire always leaves behind.
Police identified Pettis after he was wounded, and the investigation moved forward as a homicide inquiry focused on the circumstances of the shooting in Central City. Public reporting available online about his death did not name any suspect, describe an arrest, or announce charges connected to the shooting, leaving the story to end where so many do at first: with unanswered questions and a neighborhood trying to make sense of another life cut short.
In the days that followed, funeral notices and obituary information placed him in the care of loved ones, naming family members and the people closest to him, and giving a second date for his passing that reflects how quickly the timeline blurred between injury and death. The obituary for Charles Noel Pettis reported that he “entered into eternal rest” on February 16, 2018, and described the family who mourned him, including his fiancé and his brothers, as arrangements were made to lay him to rest.
