In the early hours of December 26, 2014, gunfire erupted in downtown Shreveport, Louisiana, turning what began as a holiday night into chaos. Robert Douglas Swenson, 52, a white man, was caught in the violence on Lake Street, where police were dispatched around 12:37 a.m. after reports of a shooting near the 100 block. Officers arriving on scene found multiple victims scattered across nearby parking lots, the aftermath unfolding across a short stretch of street as people ran for cover and others tried to make sense of what had just happened.
According to the police account published that day, two teenage boys were also shot—one found near the corner of Lake and Spring with a gunshot wound to the leg, and another located a short distance away in the 200 block of Lake Street with a gunshot wound to the posterior. In the same area where the second teen was discovered, an adult man was found with a gunshot wound to the chest. All three were rushed to University Health by the Shreveport Fire Department, but the adult victim—later identified as Swenson—was pronounced dead at the hospital, while the teens survived with injuries described as non-life-threatening.
Investigators traced the violence back to a Christmas party at the Holiday Inn on Lake Street. Witnesses told police there had been an altercation involving at least two groups of partygoers, and that the groups were asked to leave. Outside, across the street from the hotel, at least one person involved in the dispute began firing into the parking lots. Detectives stated they did not believe Swenson had any connection to the party or to the teenagers who were wounded, suggesting he was an uninvolved bystander swept into the trajectory of someone else’s conflict.
Public reporting identified Swenson as being from Fairfield Bay, Arkansas, and visiting Shreveport at the time he was killed. His death was widely treated as part of a “deadly triple shooting” scenario—one fatality and two injured teens—centered on that brief, violent burst of gunfire outside the Holiday Inn and nearby hotels along Lake Street.
As for arrests, named suspects, or courtroom outcomes, the contemporaneous account available publicly describes detectives working to identify and apprehend whoever opened fire, but it does not name any suspect, announce an arrest, or describe charges filed in connection with Swenson’s killing. The report ends with investigators still asking for information as the case remained under investigation at that time.
