NEW ORLEANS (AP) — New Orleans pressed ahead with plans to reopen the city’s famed Bourbon Street on Thursday as investigators kept digging into the background of the U.S. Army veteran who drove a pickup truck into a crowd of New Year’s revelers, killing 15 people.
The FBI said it was investigating the attack, which occurred when 42-year-old Shamsud-Din Jabbar steered around a police blockade, as a terrorist act. Investigators believe the driver was inspired by the Islamic State group.
Authorities recovered a black flag of the Islamic State in the truck, and President Joe Biden said he was told by the FBI that Jabbar, a U.S. citizen from Texas, had posted videos to social media hours before the carnage that showed he was motivated by the militant group and expressed a desire to kill.
He was shot to death by police, and the FBI said Wednesday that it believed he did not act alone. Investigators found guns and what appeared to be an improvised explosive device in the vehicle, along with other explosive devices elsewhere in the French Quarter.
Officials fanned out to serve search warrants and spent hours at a Houston-area home thought to be connected to the investigation. But as of Thursday morning, no additional arrests were known to have been made, and it was unclear if the FBI was still actively looking for more suspects.
The rampage turned festive Bourbon Street into a macabre scene of maimed victims, bloodied bodies and pedestrians fleeing for safety inside nightclubs and restaurants. In addition to the dead, dozens of people were hurt.
Zion Parsons, 18, of Gulfport, Mississippi, said he saw the truck “barreling through, throwing people like in a movie scene, throwing people into the air.”
“Bodies, bodies all up and down the street, everybody screaming and hollering,” said Parsons, whose friend Nikyra Dedeaux was among the dead.
But by Thursday, a still-reeling city was inching back toward normal operations. Authorities finished processing the scene early in the morning, removing the last of the bodies, and Bourbon Street was set to reopen at some point later in the day, according to an official familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to The Associated Press.
The Sugar Bowl college football game between Notre Dame and Georgia, initially set for Wednesday night and postponed by a day in the interest of national security, was still on for Thursday. And the city planned to host the Super Bowl next month.
Federal officials were investigating Jabbar’s potential associations with any terror organizations as they hunted for additional clues in what’s believed to be the deadliest IS-inspired assault on U.S. soil in years.
Local officials, meanwhile, faced more questions about security protocols in the city leading up to the attack, the latest example of a vehicle being used as a weapon to carry out mass violence.
Jabbar drove a rented pickup truck onto a sidewalk, going around a police car that was positioned to block vehicular traffic, authorities said. A barrier system meant to prevent vehicle attacks was being repaired in preparation for the Super Bowl.
Jabbar was killed by police after he exited the truck and opened fire on responding officers, New Orleans Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick said. Three officers returned fire. Two were shot and are in stable condition.
The driver “defeated” safety measures in place to protect pedestrians and was “hell-bent on creating the carnage and the damage that he did,” Kirkpatrick said.
“This is not just an act of terrorism. This is evil,” she added.
Also on Wednesday, there were deadly explosions in Honolulu and outside a Las Vegas hotel owned by President-elect Donald Trump. Biden said the FBI was looking into whether the Las Vegas explosion was connected to the New Orleans attack but had “nothing to report” as of Wednesday evening.
A photo circulated among law enforcement officials showed a bearded Jabbar wearing camouflage next to the truck after he was killed. The intelligence bulletin obtained by the AP said he was wearing a ballistic vest and helmet. The flag of the Islamic State group was on the truck’s trailer hitch, the FBI said.
“For those people who don’t believe in objective evil, all you have to do is look at what happened in our city early this morning,” U.S. Sen. John Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican, said. “If this doesn’t trigger the gag reflex of every American, every fair-minded American, I’ll be very surprised.”
Jabbar joined the Army in 2007, serving on active duty in human resources and information technology and deploying to Afghanistan from 2009 to 2010, the service said. He transferred to the Army Reserve in 2015 and left in 2020 with the rank of staff sergeant.
Hours after the attack, several coroner’s office vans were parked on the corner of Bourbon and Canal streets, cordoned off by police tape with crowds of dazed tourists standing around, some trying to navigate their luggage through the labyrinth of blockades.
Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry urged people to avoid the area, which remained an active crime scene.
“We looked out our front door and saw caution tape and dead silence, and it’s eerie,” said Tessa Cundiff, an Indiana native who moved to the French Quarter a few years ago. “This is not what we fell in love with, it’s sad.”
Biden, speaking from the presidential retreat at Camp David, addressed the victims and the people of New Orleans: “I want you to know I grieve with you. Our nation grieves with you as you mourn and as you heal.”
FBI officials have repeatedly warned about an elevated international terrorism threat due to the Israel-Hamas war. In the last year, the agency has disrupted other potential attacks, including in October when it arrested an Afghan man in Oklahoma for an alleged Election Day plot targeting large crowds.
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Tucker reported from Washington, and Mustian reported from Black Mountain, North Carolina. Associated Press reporters Stephen Smith, Chevel Johnson and Brett Martel in New Orleans; Jeff Martin in Atlanta; Alanna Durkin Richer, Tara Copp and Zeke Miller in Washington; Darlene Superville in New Castle, Delaware; Colleen Long in West Palm Beach, Florida; and Michael R. Sisak in New York contributed to this report.
