Video: 'SYND 8-1-73 SCENES OF GUN BATTLE'

(Sunday, January 7, 1973, shortly before 9 p.m. CST) — After a day of terror in which 7 persons, including three police officers, were killed and 13 were wounded, New Orleans policemen, in a borrowed Marine helicopter, tonight killed sniper Mark Essex, a former Black Panther party member, with red tracer bullets.

The helicopter swooped out of rain and darkness to provide a mobile platform for police sharpshooters to hunt down Essex on the roof of the Downtown Howard Johnson’s Motor Lodge. Essex, who was dressed in green, was reported to have been riddled with tracer bullets.

Video: '(1973) Three Black Snipers in New Orleans Kill Whites Only'

The other dead were two hotel guests and two hotel employees.

In a separate attack on New Years’ Eve, Essex had killed a police officer and wounded a second officer.

In all, Essex killed a total of nine people, including five policemen, and wounded 14 others in two separate attacks in New Orleans on December 31, 1972, and January 7, 1973.

Video: 'this Marine stole a helicopter to take out a sniper in New Orleans'

Essex was a former member of a New York-based branch of the Black Panthers. He is strongly believed to have specifically sought to kill white people and police officers due to the racism he had previously experienced while enlisted in the Navy.

His increasingly extremist anti-police, black supremacist, and anti-white views are believed to have solidified following a November 1972 violent clash between Baton Rouge police officers and student civil rights demonstrators, during which two young black demonstrators were shot and killed.