Man loses 2nd son to gun violence in just over 3 years

NEW ORLEANS – For the second time in a little over three years, Dwayne Hitchens Sr. must bury a son who was shot multiple times. His younger son was killed in 2014; his older son, on Monday.

Hitchens said that when he woke up Tuesday, he thought he might just have been dreaming that Dwayne Hitchens Jr., 31, had been killed, Nola.com/The Times-Picayune reported .

"It happened again, all over again," he said during a phone interview with the newspaper. "I didn't know if it was something I was dreaming. But it's real. This is the real world."

Hitchens said that on Sunday night, his son told him that he'd been in a fight at a club — and when he and friends left, the man he'd fought yelled, "I want all of them dead by tomorrow!"

Investigators haven't made any arrests or identified any suspects, police spokesman Aaron Looney told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Police told the newspaper there also have been no arrests in the deaths of Hitchens' 25-year-old son, Deron Hitchens, and Kendrell Fields, 29, who were killed March 4, 2014, outside Mardi Gras World after a rapper's performance there.

Deron Hitchens' body was in a car and Fields' nearby on the ground.

The brothers had three children, one of whom Hitchens Sr. and his wife are raising.

Hitchens said his older son was trying to get his life together after serving about five years of a 7½-year sentence imposed under a plea agreement with prosecutors. His arrest was part of a federal prosecution of feared drug kingpin Marchello Jones, who is serving a 30-year sentence.

He got out of prison nine days after his brother was killed.

Dwayne Hitchens Jr. was working toward becoming a longshoreman and was thinking about moving to Texas to get away from New Orleans, his father said.

"I'm not the only person in New Orleans going through things," Hitchens said. "There are others who lost their children and they are weeping."

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Information from: The Times-Picayune, http://www.nola.com