Officials say 15 people are dead and dozens injured after a man driving at a high rate of speed plowed through a crowd of people on Bourbon Street early New Year’s Day morning.
“The city of New Orleans was impacted by a terrorist attack, it’s still all under investigation,” New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell said.
New Orleans Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick says the mass casualty incident began at 3:15 New Year’s Day morning.
“It did involve a man driving a pickup truck down Bourbon Street at a very fast pace and it was very intentional behavior,” Kirkpatrick said. “This man was trying to run over as many people as he possibly could.”
Kirkpatrick also said that the suspect fired a gun at officers when he crashed his vehicle. Two officers were shot and the NOPD says they are in stable condition.
Multiple media outlets are reporting officers returned fire at that time, killing the suspect.
The FBI has identified the subject as 42-year-old Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a U.S. Citizen from Texas. He was driving a Ford pickup truck, which appears to have been rented.
An ISIS flag was located in the vehicle and the FBI is working to determine the subject’s potential associations and affiliations with terrorist organizations.
Weapons and a potential IED were located in the subject’s vehicle. Other potential IED’s were also located in the French Quarter.
The FBI’s Special Agent Bomb Technicians are working with law enforcement partners to determine if any of these devices are viable and they will work to render those devices safe.
This mass casualty event occurred on the morning of the Sugar Bowl, with thousands of tourists in town for the College Football Playoff game and New Year’s celebrations.
Kirkpatrick said it appears most of the victims are locals.
Among the known victims are a Baton Rouge father of two, who is among the ten people dead. A University of Georgia student is among the critically injured. St. Thomas More Athletics Director Kim Broussard has confirmed that former STM football player Tiger Bech is one of the individuals killed in the terrorist attack.
Bech played college football at Princeton. He was just 28-years-old.
Tiger is the older brother of former LSU receiver Jack Bech, who played at LSU in 2021 and 2022.
She said there were over 400 police officers in the French Quarter when the suspect used his vehicle to kill as many people as possible.
“He was hell bent of creating the carnage and damage that he did,” Kirkpatrick said.
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