On the evening of Wednesday, June 30, 2021, 25-year-old mother and student Ceyonne Riley was driving on the Pontchartrain Expressway in New Orleans when her vehicle was struck by gunfire. She was taken to a local hospital and died of her injuries two days later, on Friday, July 2, 2021. Investigators believe the shots were fired from an unknown vehicle while she was driving home.

Riley was a Delgado Community College student training to be a nurse and worked as a medical assistant at Ochsner Health. To support her young daughter she also drove for a food delivery service, which she was reportedly doing that night. Friends and family described her as vibrant and devoted to caring for others.

The New Orleans Police Department treated the incident as part of a string of interstate shootings that year; while some of those incidents had been linked to road rage, no clear motive in Riley’s case had been identified and no suspects had been publicly named. Anyone with information about the shooting is asked to come forward.