Jeremy Straughter savored his peeks at the football field while working in the Mercedes Benz Superdome’s culinary department, his sister said. As an avid New Orleans Saints fan, she said, her 30-year-old brother enjoyed “just being at the at the dome” with other fans during home games.
He was on the verge of landing a second job in the food service industry, according to Taneshia Straughter, when his life’s plans dissolved on Thursday (Aug. 25).
That afternoon, New Orleans police responding to the shooting found Jeremy Straughter’s body near the entrance of an Algiers gas station convenience store with gunshots to his back, authorities said. He died at the scene. Investigators worked near the black screens set up to shield his body from the view of the public, as rain poured down outside the cover of the Shell station’s partial roof in the 2600 block of General DeGaulle Drive.
NOPD investigating homicide on General DeGaulle in Algiers
Taneshia Straughter, 33, said the shock and disappointment about her brother’s death stings more knowing he lay dead at the gas station alone, and for days after that at the morgue, with no family or loved ones by his side. She found out Sunday her brother had been killed more three days earlier when she went to NOPD to fill out a missing person’s report on him, she said.
It wasn’t like her brother to “ghost,” Taneshia Straughter said. He had an active role in the lives of his five nieces and nephews, cooking and cleaning for them. No one in her family, to Taneshia Straughter’s knowledge, had been contacted to let them know he died before she went to the police station three days later.
Some of Jeremy Straughter’s relatives drove by the homicide scene outside the gas station on Thursday. They saw the police tape, the detectives and knew it was a crime scene, Taneshia Straughter said, but did not know whose body lay behind the screens.
“All that time it was my brother,” she said. “It’s a hard pill to swallow.”
The Orleans Parish Corner’s Office is typically tasked with notifying next of kin, as well as with the public release of homicide victims’ names. The office sent a notification Tuesday identifying the Aug. 25 Algiers homicide victim as Jeremy Straughter. The coroner’s office did not immediately respond on Wednesday to questions about the apparent lack of family notification between Thursday and Monday, though a spokesman said he was looking into it.
Jeremy Straughter worked hard to create forward momentum in his life after experiences in his past with the justice system, his sister said. The same day Taneshia Sraughter learned her brother died, someone from the Waffle House located near the gas station where her brother was killed contacted her with interest in his employment application.
“It takes a lot for a young man to make changes, positive changes,” she said. “He was working hard to meet (his) goals.”
Jeremy Straughter was Taneshia Straughter’s youngest sibling, she said. He’s also survived by their sister Ja’Queen Straughter, 32, and other relatives.
A murder charge filed Thursday against a 30-year-old man NOPD arrested in connection to Jeremy Straughter’s homicide was dropped two days later, New Orleans police said, after video evidence called into question the accuracy of certain witness statements.
As her family tries to grasp the loss and grapple with questions of who killed her brother, Taneshia Straughter said, she’s still haunted by the thought of not knowing for days that her brother was dead.
“He passed away and nobody knew. Nobody was there,” she said.
https://www.nola.com
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