A warrant has been issued for the arrest of an 18-year-old man in connection to a Sunday (Feb. 10) attack on a group of tourists from Colorado, New Orleans police said.
Mark Hunter is wanted on a charge of second-degree battery related to the early morning attack at the edge of the French Quarter and Central Business District, NOPD said. The beating left one man, Mark Whittaker Allen, 30, hospitalized with missing teeth and a shattered jaw, he told NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune.
"I’m just really blown away by the violence of it,” Allen said.
In a news release Friday, NOPD said the group of tourists, who said they exchanged words with a group of people on a party bus near Canal Street and St. Charles Avenue, started walking away from the site of the argument when one of the people from the bus “allegedly punched the victim from the rear on the right side of his face and knocked him unconscious.” One of the tourists then called 911, “as an assault reportedly began on a second victim,” the release states.
Allen’s friend Matt Wasserman suffered a bruised eye in the attack, said Gabrielle Lee, Allen’s girlfriend who was among the five person group.
Sarvenaz Chaichian, also among the group of college friends from Colorado, said the altercation started when the Colorado friends witnessed people heckling a woman on the street who appeared to be homeless. She said Wasserman told the group to stop, prompting nearly two dozen people, mostly teenage boys, to get off the bus and approach the group of five tourists with clenched fists.
“This type of violence is unacceptable and will not be tolerated in the City of New Orleans,” NOPD Superintendent Shaun Ferguson said in a statement Wednesday night. “I can assure the victims and public, the NOPD is working hard to identify and locate those responsible... and bring them to justice.”
Anyone with information on this incident or the whereabouts of Mark Hunter is asked to contact NOPD Eighth District detectives at 504-658-6080. Provide information anonymously through Crimestoppers at 504-822-1111 or toll-free at 1-877-903-STOP.
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly named the suspected attacker as Michael Hunter. His name is Mark Hunter.
NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune reporters Hanna Krueger and Laura McKnight contributed to this story.