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 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, 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,” New Orleans Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick said.
