EVANS CUTCHMORE

CIVIC JOURNALISM

Before the Wrecking Crews: Remembering Kevin Joseph Mosley

A 13-year-old boy died in a DeGaulle Manor elevator shaft in 1999. As demolition finally begins, his story must not be buried with the rubble.

By Kim M. Braud  |  Evans Cutchmore  |  June 29, 2026

His name will not appear on the City Council agenda. No resolution will be read in his honor. No moment of silence will be called before the vote. But as New Orleans finally begins tearing down DeGaulle Manor in Algiers, the name Kevin Joseph Mosley deserves to be spoken out loud.

Kevin was 13 years old on the night of October 28, 1999. He was visiting his aunt at the DeGaulle Manor apartment complex in Algiers when he climbed out of an open hole in the top of an elevator cab. The elevator moved. He became trapped between the cab and the shaft walls. Several hours passed before a wall was removed to retrieve him. He was pronounced dead in the early morning hours of October 29, 1999 at Charity Hospital.

He was not the victim of a freak accident. He was the victim of documented, preventable neglect.

A BUILDING THAT WAS ALREADY FAILING

By the time Kevin died, DeGaulle Manor had been in physical and moral freefall for years. Court records and city documents describe a complex plagued by broken elevators, rusted railings, burst pipes, rodent infestations, and rotting garbage. The security gates did not close. Drug dealers moved freely through the breezeway. By 1993, the complex had become one of NOPD Fourth District's documented hotspots for violence and narcotics activity, so dangerous that local taxicab companies suspended service to the area.

Between 1970 and its eventual closure in 2012, no owner kept the property for more than seven years. Each time it changed hands, the new owners made little effort to address the problems left behind by the last. The elevator that killed Kevin Mosley was not a surprise. It was a consequence.

THE LAWSUITS AND WHAT THEY REVEAL

In the weeks following Kevin's death, his parents filed separate lawsuits in Orleans Parish Civil District Court. His mother, Tara Mosley, filed on November 22, 1999, naming DeGaulle Manor Ltd. and a company officer as defendants. His father, Rydell Bienaime, filed on December 1, 1999, naming complex manager Carolyn Kitzman, elevator manufacturer and maintainer Montgomery Kone, Inc., and Zurich American Insurance Company.

The two cases were removed to federal court and consolidated on March 3, 2000, under the docket Bienaime v. Kitzman (Civ. No. 00-284, E.D. Louisiana). The consolidated case alleged that DeGaulle Manor had failed to timely respond to complaints about the elevator and failed to fix its obvious defects. It further alleged that Kitzman, as the on-site manager who supervised staff cleaning the elevator interiors, should have known about the dangerous condition and owed a personal duty to tenants and their guests.

The court granted the motion to add Kitzman as a personal defendant, finding sufficient grounds to pursue her individual liability under Louisiana law. The case record is a documented indictment of willful neglect at every level: ownership, management, and elevator maintenance.

THIS IS NOT SOMEONE ELSE'S STORY

I am not writing about Kevin Mosley from a distance. I know that building. My uncle lived at DeGaulle Manor for years. I spent much of my young adult life walking those halls. I know what it felt like inside: the families doing their best in apartments that the city, the owners, and the federal government had already given up on.

And I know Kevin's family. His mother, Tara Mosley, sang in the choir at St. Rose Missionary Baptist Church, my childhood church from when we lived in the Lower Ninth Ward. Even after our family moved to the West Bank, my mother kept that connection. Every Sunday morning, she drove to pick Tara up for church. That is the kind of community bond that does not require explanation in New Orleans. You either know what it means or you do not.

When Kevin died, it did not stay in the headlines. It moved into the pews. It rode across the bridge on Sunday morning. It sat at dinner tables across Algiers and the Lower Nine. That is how grief works in this city.

ALGIERS HAS ALWAYS KNOWN THIS FEELING

When demolition funding collapsed in December 2025, Councilmember Freddie King III said what West Bank residents have been saying for decades: "This is another example of Algiers being treated less than other parts of the city."

He was right. DeGaulle Manor sat vacant and deteriorating for over a decade after its 2012 closure, drawing squatters, illegal dumping, drug activity, and shootings. The city named it to its "Dirty Dozen" blighted properties list. Demolition was announced in 2024, stalled for lack of funds, restarted, stalled again, and only now in June 2026 is actually underway in phases expected to last through May 2027. The total project cost is $3 million.

A child died in that building 27 years ago. It took the city more than two decades to start tearing it down.

WHAT WE OWE KEVIN NOW

Demolition is not accountability. It is a beginning. The 25-acre site at 3010 Sandra Drive represents one of the most significant redevelopment opportunities on the West Bank. Residents have already made clear what they want to see: a mix of housing and retail that serves the people of Algiers, including affordable units for the families who have lived here through all of it.

Evans Cutchmore will continue to document and report on what happens to this land. We will be watching the committee vote. We will be watching the full Council vote. We will be watching what gets built and who benefits. Because the history of this site demands it.

And because Kevin Mosley deserved a city that protected him. He deserved safe elevators, a maintained building, and owners who took their duty of care seriously. He did not get any of those things.

The least we can do now is remember his name.

Rest in peace, Kevin Joseph Mosley. October 29, 1999.

Source Note: Case details referenced from Bienaime v. Kitzman, Civ. No. 00-284 c/w 00-473, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Louisiana (April 13, 2000). Historical property records sourced from Wikipedia, Grokipedia, Abandoned Southeast, and Times-Picayune archives. Demolition reporting sourced from WWL-TV, Fox 8, WGNO, and NOLA.com (June 2026).

Kim M. Braud is a strategist, writer, and founder working in the areas of economic power, cultural narrative, and community leadership. With expansive experience across financial services, entrepreneurship, and nonprofit leadership, her writing explores who controls systems, who benefits from them, and who gets left out. Her work centers on economic mobility, institutional accountability, and the stories we inherit, and the ones we choose to dismantle.