NEW ORLEANS — One car rear-ends another on a Saturday night. People argue. It escalates.
Ten or so gunshots later, one driver is dead and the other waits nervously to give his side of the story to police.
Conflicts settled by gunfire are tragically common in New Orleans, but there was nothing routine about this one: The dead man was retired football player Will Smith, a star on the 2006 Saints team who helped lift the stricken city’s spirits with a winning season after Hurricane Katrina, and played with the team when it won the franchise’s only Super Bowl three seasons later.