A crime wave – in addition to everything else.

Eight people have been found dead since Jan. 1, seven of them shooting victims, with the most recent being a young woman found lying on her bed in the Uptown section Friday morning, shot in the head.

As the police were scrambling to investigate that killing and the others, mostly of young men gunned down in high-crime areas, grief-stricken neighbors gathered outside the house of Helen Hill, an independent filmmaker, and her husband, Dr. Paul Gailiunas, who were shot by an intruder early Thursday morning in the Faubourg Marigny section, the authorities said.

Ms. Hill, 36, well known in the local film community and the recipient of several awards, was killed; Dr. Gailiunas, who specialized in treating the city’s poor, survived his wounds. The police found him kneeling by the front door, bleeding and holding the couple’s 2-year-old son in his arms. His wife lay nearby, shot in the neck. The child was not hurt.

That crime, breaking the typical pattern of drug-related shootings, helped prompt a front-page headline in The Times-Picayune on Friday: “Killings bring the city to its bloodied knees.”

Do you live in New Orleans? Please tell us about the situation there – the whole picture.