Easter Sunday, shortly after noon, people arriving home after crowded church services, ready to eat, then hide and hunt those eggs, again.

A gunshot, instead, shatters the festive atmosphere on Hill Street, near Lee.

These times don’t produce the shock and dismay such as shook the nation in the wake of gunshots on a similar late-March Easter 49 years ago, but the violence rattled a neighborhood nonetheless.

Derrick Ford Jr., 23, of Alexandria was taken to a hospital after responding city officers found he had been shot. He died there.

Several hours later Reginald Pullins, 21, who lives on Hill, turned himself in. He’s charged with second-degree murder and held under $1,000,000 bail.

Investigators through Monday night had released no information relative to the circumstances of the shooting.

Pullins has no arrest record in the parish dating to 2018.

Ford was charged in February 2021 with attempted murder related to a shooting at Mason & Fenner streets, coincidentally a short walk from where he was shot.

Ford was re-booked in May 2021 on battery 2nd degree charges. Records indicate he was released from Department of Corrections custody on January 23 this year.

Alexandria detectives are also working a fatal shooting that occurred on Pisciotta Street in the wee hours Easter morning.

Police said Jessie Tatum III, 49, was the victim. His killer was at-large as of Monday night.

Tatum had Rapides arrests accusing him of possession with intent to distribute and possession, in 2020 and 2023.

Back to 1975 – anyone on duty near an Associated Press teletype machine that Easter remembers the flash bulletin – “11 Ohio family members shot to death.”

If interested, Google James Ruppert.