page_title: Helen Hill
section_title: Death
hierarchical_section_title: Helen Hill / Death
caption_attribution_description: English: Memorial outside home of shooting victims in Marigny neighborhood, New Orleans
context_page_description: Helen Wingard Hill was an American artist, filmmaker, writer, teacher, and social activist. When her final film, The Florestine Collection, was released in 2011, curators and critics praised her work and legacy, describing her, for example, as "one of the most well-regarded experimental animators of her generation."
  Hill's death at the age of 36 brought considerable media attention. In 2007, an unidentified intruder shot and killed her in her New Orleans home. Her death, coupled with the murder a week before of New Orleans musician Dinerral Shavers, sparked civic outrage. Thousands marched against the rampant and continuing post-Katrina violence in New Orleans. This "March Against Violence on City Hall" drew significant press coverage throughout the United States and beyond. However, in the years following that tragic notoriety, Helen Hill's life and creative work have been widely celebrated, with her films continuing to circulate to a degree they did not during her lifetime. In 2012, Daniel Eagan wrote about Helen Hill as one of "Five Women Animators Who Shook Up the Industry".
context_section_description: Helen Hill was murdered at approximately 5:30 in the morning on January 4, 2007, by an unknown intruder in her home in the Faubourg Marigny neighborhood.  Her husband was shot three times and survived; their toddler son was uninjured. Shortly beforehand, the intruder had apparently attempted to rob a bed-and-breakfast a few houses down the street. Police were questioning the bed-and-breakfast's owners when they heard gunshots at Hill's house.
  As of 2018, the New Orleans Police Department has made no arrest in the case, despite a $15,000 Crimestoppers reward being in effect for any information leading to an indictment. The case has received extensive media coverage, including national radio, television, and print coverage in the United States and Canada.
  Hill's murder was one of a spate of killings in the first week of 2007 in New Orleans, prompting civic outrage that culminated in a march on City Hall on January 11, 2007, sometimes referred to as the March for Survival. Organizers Helen Gillet (a friend of both Hill and Shavers'), Ken Foster, and Baty Landis went on to form the nonprofit organization Silence Is Violence, which remains active in its "campaign for peace in New Orleans".
caption: Memorial items outside Hill & Gailiunas' house
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