Last month, Gov. Kathleen Blanco sent the Louisiana National Guard and state police to New Orleans after five teenagers were shot to death in a single attack.

Such sensational slayings have a crippling effect on the city's struggle to rebuild its tourism industry and persuade evacuees to return, said city councilman James Carter, who heads the council's committee on crime.

"The spotlight Katrina put on the city showed the real reason for these murders - abject poverty and a poor education system," Carter said. "We have to go from looking at this as a strict law enforcement situation and take a more holistic approach."

So far this year there have been 78 homicides in New Orleans, still far fewer than normal in a city accustomed to violence, but enough to cause residents to fear a return to the days when New Orleans was the murder capital of the nation.

The latest shooting was in the Central City neighborhood, where most of the killings have occurred. The other recent ones, however, did not happen in the high-crime areas police have been targeting in their drive to stamp out the violence, police Superintendent Warren Riley said.

The three brothers - 16-year-old twins and a 21-year-old - were killed late Friday in the Treme neighborhood, along with their 39-year-old friend, Riley said. All four lived nearby.

They were sitting on the porch of an abandoned house when two men walked by, then turned around and started blasting, Riley said.

The fifth shooting happened early Saturday in the Gentilly neighborhood, an area that was severely flooded and has been slowly rebuilding. Police said they found a man dead in a street after they received reports that shots had been fired.

Responding to another call, police found a 31-year-old man lying in the middle of a Central City street with multiple gunshot wounds, officer Garry Flot said late Saturday. The man was pronounced dead at the scene.

Murder and other crimes had plummeted in the first months after Katrina hit New Orleans on Aug. 29 and flooded 80 percent of the city. The city's population is currently estimated to be about half the pre-storm total of 465,000.

People who "live the life" of drugs and violence were taking their toll on the rest of the residents, Riley acknowledged Saturday.

"It is an unfortunate and very, very sad situation for those good-quality citizens who are living with the guidelines of what we all consider normalcy - the norms of society," Riley said.

Last month, five teens were killed as they sat in or stood near a sport utility vehicle. A 19-year-old man with a lengthy juvenile record was later arrested in the deaths.

Willoughby was charged with attempted murder, assault and malicious burning in connection with injuries suffered by his 39-year-old girlfriend. Prince George's County police said the couple was at Willoughby's home early Saturday when they apparently had an argument.

Police said that around 2 a.m., the dispute escalated and the woman was burned.

"Once she was doused with the gasoline and set on fire, she ran from that location to her home," less than a half mile away, said Cpl. Clinton Copeland, a police spokesman. Police and emergency medical technicians responded to a 911 call placed from the woman's home. She was taken to Washington Hospital Center in the District of Columbia for treatment of her injuries.

Police first went to Willoughby's home before they were notified of his whereabouts.

"We were called to the friend's house," Copeland said.

The woman has not been identified because she is an alleged crime victim.

Willoughby was being held at the Prince George's County Detention Center.

It follows the unsolved shootings of three people by a gunman who ran into a Hamilton bar in April and the shooting of a bystander in a crowd outside a bar full of tourists on the South Shore last month.

Police say the incidents could be linked to Lightbourne's killing, with gang problems the likeliest motive, but they have yet to make arrests.

That doesn't surprise U.S. police officer DeLacy Davis, recruited by the government to deal with Bermuda's gang problems. The 20-year veteran of New Jersey's streets told the island's media after Lightbourne's shooting that it was naive to expect gang members to turn in their own members.

But he said police could do more to build links with the island community of 63,000 people.

"The greatest asset that the island has is everybody knows everyone on the island," Davis said.

At least Bermuda seems genuinely concerned about coming to grips with gangs, said Davis. In the United States, he said it took the government at least a decade to acknowledge the problem.

Late last year, police here revealed that at least one gang leader was openly acknowledging an affiliation with the Crips and the Bloods -- street gangs originating in Los Angeles that have become synonymous with violence and drugs.

Graffiti championing the association had begun appearing on walls in well-known gang hangouts.

Bermuda gang members have been seen sporting jewelry and tattoos declaring their respective allegiances while pictures of young men in bars making gang hand signals have been appearing on popular Web sites.

DRUG-FUELED VIOLENCE

Authorities have linked the island's gang problem to its burgeoning drug trade, which police say is worth about $200 million a year.

Narcotics, with the bulk of consumption blamed on locals rather than tourists, have long been an easy way to make cash in pricey Bermuda, where the average house costs nearly $1.2 million and the average rent is more than $1,400 a month.

Prices for smuggled handguns, which often arrive with illicit drug shipments, have soared to $3,000, with owners wanting protection amid heightened violence over drug turf.

Last year Bermuda appointed a special cabinet minister for drug control, and it has just hired a top British cop as assistant commissioner with a special brief to handle crime and drugs.

The tough approach to law and order has won praise from the island's British-appointed governor who urged islanders not to panic and pointed out that violent crime in the last quarter was at the same level seen in the last seven years.

In late July, the government pledged to boost dwindling police numbers and said screaming headlines about the latest bloody gang clash are not the sort of image Bermuda is trying to sell.

A U.S. Consulate travel advisory, amid standard warnings about petty crime, now flags Bermuda's increasing gang problem, pointing out that the back streets of Hamilton are often the setting for nighttime assaults, particularly after the bars close.

Tourism Minister Ewart Brown who has fought hard to reverse Bermuda's long-term decline in visitor numbers said: "Our visitors do not come to Bermuda to find this and they will stop coming if it continues."

He is not the only one to worry. Bermuda's booming financial sector is also watching carefully.

Association for Bermuda International Business Chairman David Ezekiel said quality of life was the issue that kept the tiny, remote island ahead of its competition.

"Every time you get incidents which threaten that safety and civility Bermuda is known for it will impact every sector including international business," he said.

Despite the spate of shootings, he said context was important.

"It's a huge relative change from the way we were but compared to other countries and domiciles were are still at the top of the scale for safety. It's cause for concern but nothing more than that."

Four people were dead at the scene and two more died at St. John's Mercy Hospital in Creve Couer, hospital spokesman David Downs said. One of the injured was in critical condition and one was in serious condition, Downs said.

No one on the ground was reported injured, Toelke said.

"People on the ground said they saw something happen to the engine, and the plane sort of entered into a nosedive," Toelke said.

The victims had not been identified, but some were believed to have been from the St. Louis area.

The plane, a DeHavilland DHC-6 Twin Otter, had taken off from the Sullivan Regional Airport in eastern Missouri a short time before the crash, said patrol operator Ken Tretter.

The plane was making a skydiving flight for Quantum Leap Skydiving Inc., said Mark Lacy, safety and training adviser for the company, which is located in Sullivan. There were eight people aboard, he said.

"It's a crash, and it's bad," Lacy said.

About a dozen people affiliated with Quantum Leap gathered at First Assembly of God church in Sullivan, where officials had set up a command post. A deacon brought out boxes of tissues as six people held hands in a prayer circle.

"Everybody will rally around each other," said Judy Oglesby, wife of the church's pastor. "Already people are contacting each other, offering to help any way they can."

Toelke and Lacy did not know what caused the crash.

"It's all speculation," Lacy said. "There will have to be an FAA investigation on that."

The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board would investigate, FAA spokeswoman Elizabeth Isham Cory said.