Myrtis “M.B.” Bickham was a 76-year-old man from New Orleans, Louisiana, whose life ended violently on the night of October 27, 2003, when gunfire found him outside a home on Ursuline Street.
Investigators described the shooting as an ambush: shortly after 9:00 p.m., rifle fire erupted outside 2324 Ursuline Street, striking Bickham and Roosevelt Brown Jr., a relative who was with him.
Reports of the scene said Bickham suffered wounds to his head and torso and was pronounced dead there, while Brown—also hit in the head and torso—was rushed to the Medical Center of Louisiana and died hours later.
In the days that followed, the killings were publicly framed as part of a wider chain of retaliation that had already been tormenting the city. The violence was linked, in investigators’ view, to the fallout from the April 14, 2003 shooting at John McDonogh High School, when Jonathan “Caveman” Williams was killed and others were wounded; even with the accused shooters in that case already in custody, detectives believed friends and associates were still trying to settle the score—casting their net at anyone they thought bore responsibility.
Bickham’s obituary remembered him in quieter terms—an older man with deep family ties, mourned by loved ones who gathered to honor him days later at St. Peter Claver Catholic Church before his burial at Providence Memorial Park. Yet the public record that is readily accessible today does not show an identified assailant being arrested, charged, or convicted specifically for the Ursuline Street ambush that killed him.
