{"id":20484,"date":"2026-04-24T23:05:23","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T23:05:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/20484\/"},"modified":"2026-04-24T23:05:23","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T23:05:23","slug":"lafayette-high-school-ids-17-year-old-senior-killed-in-mall-of-louisiana-shooting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/20484\/","title":{"rendered":"Lafayette high school IDs 17-year-old senior killed in Mall of Louisiana shooting"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>BATON ROUGE \u2014 A 17-year-old from a Lafayette high school died after she was shot in the chest in a Thursday afternoon shooting at the Mall of Louisiana that also left five people hospitalized.<\/p>\n<p>The teenage victim was identified by Ascension Episcopal School as Martha Odom. Two other Ascension Episcopal students were injured in the shooting.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We continue to lift in prayer the two students who are healing, as well as the two additional students who were present,&#8221; the school said in a statement Friday morning. &#8220;Her classmates, Ascension faculty, and our Blue Gator families remember Martha as a joyful presence whose kindness and infectious enthusiasm brought light to all who knew her.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The shooting broke out after two groups of people got into an argument at the Mall food court <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wbrz.com\/news\/reported-shooting-at-mall-of-louisiana\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">around 1:22 p.m.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It does not appear to be a random act of violence,&#8221; Police Chief T.J. Morse said at a news conference outside the mall&#8217;s main entrance in the aftermath of the shooting.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Bystanders, including Odom and the other Ascension Episcopal students,\u00a0were among those hit.<\/p>\n<p>Morse said five people were taken to a hospital, where one person died, and another was in surgery. Three people were being treated for minor injuries. A sixth victim was taken to a separate hospital, also with minor injuries.<\/p>\n<p>Nearly three hours after the shooting happened, Morse announced five people had been taken into custody.<\/p>\n<p>Morse and other authorities are expected to share more information about the suspects at a Friday news conference. Stay tuned to WBRZ for more details as this story develops.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BATON ROUGE \u2014 A 17-year-old from a Lafayette high school died after she was shot in the chest&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20485,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[10103,12368,8,630,12370,12369,9,3347,212,7,12371,5877,917],"class_list":{"0":"post-20484","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-top-stories","8":"tag-arrests","9":"tag-batonrouge","10":"tag-headlines","11":"tag-investigation","12":"tag-lafayette","13":"tag-malloflouisiana","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-police","16":"tag-shooting","17":"tag-top-stories","18":"tag-tragedy","19":"tag-victim","20":"tag-violence"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@news\/116462192103133372","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20484\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}