Last week's Dallas attacks was eerily reminiscent of a 1973 shooting spree

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[h=1]Dallas massacre eerily recalls 1973 slayings in New Orleans when a gunman with a military background took revenge on police and also shot dead five officers[/h]

• Last week's Dallas attacks was eerily reminiscent of a 1973 shooting spree
• It shattered the urban landscape of New Orleans and went on for 11 hours
• Police shot and killed Mark Essex from a helicopter hovering over a hotel
• The massacre in Dallas revived disturbing memories for the police, city employees and reporters who lived through it have said

By ASSOCIATED PRESS and KHALEDA RAHMAN FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 20:23, 13 July 2016 | UPDATED: 05:58, 14 July 2016


The gunman was a black former military man who targeted white police at a time of social unrest.
The chaos and confusion led authorities to conclude there must be more than one shooter.
And when it was over, a major city mourned five dead officers.
Last week's sniper attack in Dallas was eerily reminiscent of a 1973 shooting spree in downtown New Orleans that shattered the peaceful urban landscape and went on for 11 hours - until police shot and killed Mark Essex from a helicopter hovering over a hotel.

 

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Mark Essex (left) went on a shooting spree in downtown New Orleans in 1973 that was eerily reminiscent of last week's sniper attack in Dallas, where Army veteran Micah Johnson (right) killed five Dallas police officers when he opened fire at a Black Lives Matter protest on July 7

'It was a horrible time,' said David Cressy, then an assistant city attorney who was at City Hall, across the street from the hotel.
'When I hear a helicopter coming over the house, I still remember.'
The massacre in Dallas revived disturbing memories for the police, city employees and reporters who lived through the New Orleans attack, which unfolded under many of the same circumstances as the Texas shootings.
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Army veteran Micah Johnson, 25, killed five Dallas police officers when he opened fire at a Black Lives Matter protest on July 7.
He told authorities he wanted to kill whites, 'especially white officers' before he was killed by police using a remote-controlled bomb on a robot.
But there were differences between the attacks as well, including the way news of the carnage was reported to the world, compared to the instantly streamed and tweeted events in Dallas.

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Wounded police officers lie behind a police car in Duncan Plaza, during a sniper incident, across the street from the Downtown Howard Johnson Hotel in New Orleans on January 7, 1973

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Patrolman Leo Newman takes the pulse of dying Patrolman Philip Coleman outside the Downtown Howard Johnson Hotel during a 1973 sniper incident in New Orleans

 

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Retired Times-Picayune columnist Angus Lind was a 28-year-old reporter then.
He remembers tracking down a payphone to dictate notes. The only way for people to learn what was going on was through local TV stations.
Even though fears persisted of multiple, organized shooters, news organizations were granted access to the hotel – something that would be unusual today.
'The cops would actually cover us as we ran across the street to relieve each other,' Lind said.
The connections between the two events were unavoidable for Larry Preston Williams, a 67-year-old former New Orleans police officer who was there in 1973.
Asked what went through his mind when he heard the news from Dallas, Williams' mind went straight to the hotel.
'Howard Johnson's,' he said on Monday. 'Immediately.'
Now a security consultant in Arkansas, Williams was 24 at the time.
As an African-American, he was recruited by the New Orleans Police Department as it was integrating.
Williams had been a patrol officer and was later assigned to intelligence, helping place infiltrators in left- and right-wing organizations.
He remembers being summoned to City Hall that Sunday morning - January 7, 1973 - because police hoped that, with his background in intelligence, he might be able to identify the gunman if he got a good look at him.

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Eighth District officer Kenny Solis, shot in the shoulder, leans against a tree as officer Dave McCann tries to stop the bleeding. McCann and Solis had been walking across Duncan Plaza in New Orleans, when Solis clutched his shoulder and said he'd been shot

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A police sharpshooter takes an overall look at the Howard Johnson's Hotel for signs of a second sniper in New Orleans. The attacker was Mark Essex, a black former military man , who was shot and killed from a helicopter

 

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Despite the danger, Williams felt less vulnerable than those around him.
'I was in plainclothes and I was black,' he said. At the time, Essex 'was not shooting black people.'
Williams never got a look at the shooter. What he saw was carnage in the grassy park in front of City Hall.
He watched as Paul Persigo, with whom he had patrolled at times, was gunned down.
Then came shots that felled Phillip Coleman, who died of a head wound, and Ken Solis, who survived.
Inside the hotel, Deputy Police Superintendent Louis Sirgo was killed, along with four civilians.
Essex was a 23-year-old from Emporia, Kansas, who had been discharged from the Navy for 'character and behavior disorders' according to archived accounts from The Associated Press.
He was living in New Orleans and working as a trainee in an anti-poverty program.
But he harbored deep-seated hatred for whites that people who knew him said took root in the Navy.
Investigators later entered his apartment and found racial epithets painted on the walls.

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New Orleans police officers fire into a concrete cubicle atop the Howard Johnson hotel in downtown New Orleans, where they believed snipers were hiding, in New Orleans

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Mark Essex was holed up in the hotel and killed seven people, among them three police officers, before being killed by police sharpshooters from a marine helicopter

Authorities eventually learned that Essex had actually begun killing people a week earlier, on New Year's Eve.
His first victim was a black police cadet hit when Essex fired at a gateway at the New Orleans jail and escaped.
Later that night, he broke into a warehouse, fatally wounded a responding officer and disappeared again.
The violence resumed on January 7 when Essex shot and wounded a white store owner, stole a car and led police on a chase that ended at the Howard Johnson's, where he turned into the parking garage and ran into the main building.
Then-Mayor Moon Landrieu said in a 1983 interview with the AP that the shootings occurred at a time of racial and political unrest and authorities feared the violence was part of an organized revolutionary attack. No conspiracy was ever revealed.
The pain lingered for years.

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A wounded fireman is tended to by police and fellow firefighters during a sniper incident, across the street from the Downtown Howard Johnson Hotel in New Orleans

 

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'There was the agony of the burials, visiting the survivors, helping raise funds for those orphaned,' Landrieu said. 'So that aftermath continued for a very long time.'
In 1973, Louisiana and other Southern states had been rocked by more than a decade of political and social turmoil that accompanied the civil rights movement.
Landrieu, in his first term when Essex attacked, had gained the trust of many black voters and the enmity of some whites by bringing African-American appointees into city government.
Meanwhile, Williams left police work for law school in 1974. His tenure with the New Orleans Police Department had been difficult at times.
Most of the white officers accepted him, but a few refused to ride with him.
He was part of a lawsuit alleging discriminatory employment practices by the department.
But none of that mattered on January 7, 1973.
'When those officers got shot, any kind of racial politics I might have indulged in was put on the back burner,' Williams said.
'Because those were my comrades.'