Death toll in New Orleans truck attack early New Year’s Day rises to 15

Death toll in New Orleans truck attack early New Year’s Day rises to 15

Here’s the latest:

• FBI investigating vehicle attack on New Year’s Day as “act of terrorism.”
• Biden said suspect had expressed a “desire to kill.”
• Attacker targeted crowd celebrating the new year in the city’s French Quarter.
• FBI identifies truck driver, killed by police, as 42-year-old U.S.-born citizen from Texas.
• Sugar Bowl postponed 24 hours as Superdome on lockdown for security sweeps.
• Law enforcement agencies believe the suspect did not act alone.

A New Year’s celebration took a horrific turn early Wednesday when the driver of a pickup truck steered around a police blockade and rammed into a crowd on historic Bourbon Street in New Orleans, killing 15 people and injuring dozens more, authorities said. 

After driving at high speed into the crowd of new years revellers, the suspect was killed in a firefight with police. The FBI has said it is investigating the vehicle attack as “an act of terrorism.”

Investigators found multiple improvised explosive devices, including two pipe bombs that were concealed within coolers and wired for remote detonation, according to a Louisiana State Police intelligence bulletin obtained by The Associated Press.   

The bulletin, relying on information gathered soon after the attack, also said surveillance footage showed three men and a woman placing one of the devices, but federal officials did not immediately confirm that detail and it wasn’t clear who the individuals in the video were or what connection they may have had to the attack.

Driver ID’d as U.S.-born citizen

The rampage turned a festive Bourbon Street into a nightmare. In addition to those killed, more than 30 people were injured. Pedestrians fled to safety inside nightclubs and restaurants. One man watched in horror as authorities placed a tarp over his friend’s body after she was hit and thrown some nine metres.

Zion Parsons, 18, of Gulfport, Mississippi, said he saw the truck “barrelling 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 people killed.

The driver has been identified as Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42, a U.S.-born citizen from Texas. A flag representing the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) was found in the truck and the FBI was trying to determine if he was associated with any terrorist organizations, the agency said in a statement.

Authorities do not believe Jabbar acted alone, the FBI said in an update Wednesday afternoon. 

U.S. President Joe Biden told reporters that the man said to be behind the New Orleans attack had posted video on social media indicating he was inspired by ISIS.

Biden said the man had expressed a “desire to kill.”

Biden also said law enforcement is investigating whether there are any links between the truck attack and the explosion of a Tesla Cybertruck outside the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas.

The ramming took place around 3:15 a.m. local time at the intersection of Canal and Bourbon streets where a large crowd had gathered to celebrate the new year in the city’s French Quarter, the city said.

Police Supt. Anne Kirkpatrick said the driver of the pickup truck was “trying to run over as many people as he possibly could.”

“He was hell-bent on creating the carnage and damage that he did,” she told reporters.

The vehicle drove up onto the sidewalk to bypass a police vehicle and temporary barriers that had been set up to block vehicular traffic from the road, Kirkpatrick said.

A barrier system called bollards designed to prevent vehicle attacks weren’t present because they were undergoing repairs in preparation for the Super Bowl, set to be played in the city in February.

After the driver emerged from the truck, he fired on three police officers, who all returned fire, Kirkpatrick said. Two officers who were shot are in stable condition. 

FBI special agent Alethea Duncan said Wednesday that Jabbar was an army veteran and that the pickup truck used in the attack appeared to have been rented. 

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.

‘Something you can’t unsee’

Jimmy Cothran was celebrating the new year at a nightclub when people came running in from the street and started hiding under tables. He and his friends fled upstairs, to a balcony area of the club. 

There, he says he saw “unimaginable casualty” on the street below. 

“The disfigurement and the bodies strewn,” he told CBC News, were “something you can’t unsee, you’ll never forget,”

Zion Parsons, 18, of Gulfport, Miss., was on the street when the truck came “barreling through, throwing people like in a movie scene, throwing people into the air.”

Parsons said he heard gunshots and ran through a gruesome aftermath of bleeding and maimed victims.

“Bodies, bodies all up and down the street, everybody screaming and hollering,” Parsons told The Associated Press.

His friend, 18-year-old aspiring nurse Nikyra Dedeaux, was among those killed. He was the one who called her family to deliver the grim news. 

“I hadn’t had time to cry up until I called her mother and she asked me, ‘Where’s my baby,” ‘ Parsons said. “That broke me.”

Authorities have stated that they will reveal the names of the dead once autopsies are complete and all next of kin have been notified, but tributes to victims are already pouring in as family members take to social media to mourn. 

Earlier, Biden said in a statement that he was “grateful” for the swift respond of local law enforcement.

“I have directed my team to ensure every resource is available as federal, state and local law enforcement work assiduously to get to the bottom of what happened as quickly as possible and to ensure that there is no remaining threat of any kind.”

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called the attack “horrifying,” in a post on the social media platform X on Wednesday afternoon expressing condolences for the victims.

Global Affairs Canada said in a statement that any Canadians in need of emergency consular assistance should contact the agency’s Emergency Watch and Response Centre. 

Sugar Bowl postponed

The incident came hours before the kickoff of the Allstate Sugar Bowl, a college football quarter-final held in the city’s Caesars Superdome, with thousands expected to be in attendance.

At an afternoon news conference, officials announced that the game, which was scheduled to begin at 7:45 p.m. local time Wednesday, would be postponed for 24 hours. The Superdome has been put on lockdown for security sweeps.

“We don’t want to shut down these events that we celebrate every year,” New Orleans city council member Oliver Thomas told CBC News.

“But we’re going to have to do something different, especially given the world we’re in today.”

Hours after the attack, the area around Bourbon Street was taped off, with several vans from the coroner’s office parked on the corner of Bourbon and Canal streets.

Gov. Jeff Landry urged people to avoid the area, which remained an active crime scene. Just blocks away, life went on as normal, with people gathered at cafes and bars, seemingly as if nothing had happened. 

People of New Orleans resilient, resident says

The city’s residents are resilient, according to Brian O’Brien, a tour guide and resident of Bourbon Street. 

“In New Orleans, we tend to handle tragedy a little differently,” he told CBC’s As It Happens, adding that they are “not fearful people.”

“This morning, I walk out my front door to a state trooper,” he said.

He was told there was a bomb in a cooler, around 100 feet from his front stoop. Not long after, he says the bomb squad showed up to safely detonate the cooler. 

“That’s how my day started.”

So far, O’Brien says none of the victims have been names that were familiar to him, but he’s sure that will change. 

“I bet you before it’s all said and done, we’re going to know somebody, because that’s the way New Orleans works.”

Published at Wed, 01 Jan 2025 13:41:41 +0000

1 dead after Tesla Cybertruck explodes, catches fire outside Trump hotel in Las Vegas

Firework mortars and camp fuel canisters were found stuffed into the back of the Tesla Cybertruck that exploded outside U.S. president-elect Donald Trump’s Las Vegas hotel early Wednesday, killing a person inside the vehicle and sparking an intense investigation into possible terrorism.

Las Vegas Metropolitan Police and Clark County Fire Department officials said that a person died inside the futuristic-looking pickup truck and seven people nearby had minor injuries and several were taken to a hospital.

By late Wednesday afternoon, authorities were still working to get the body out of the vehicle and start processing the evidence inside. U.S. President Joe Biden was briefed on the explosion.

“Our No. 1 goal is to ensure that we have the proper identification of the subject involved in this incident,” said Jeremy Schwartz, acting special agent in charge for the FBI’s Las Vegas office.

“Following that, our second objective is to determine whether this was an act of terrorism or not.”

Police Department Sheriff Kevin McMahill said authorities know who rented the truck with the Turo app in Colorado, but are not releasing the name until investigators determine if it is the same person who died. A Turo spokesperson did not immediately respond to the AP’s emailed request for comment.

McMahill said video captured at Tesla charging stations provided by CEO Elon Musk helped authorities track the vehicle’s journey, arriving in Las Vegas about 7:30 a.m., then driving about an hour later into the valet area of the Trump International Hotel, where it sat for 15 to 20 seconds before the explosion occurred.

Video presented at an afternoon news conference showed a tumble of charred fireworks mortars, cannisters and other explosive devices crowded into the back of the pickup. The truck bed walls were still intact because the blast shot straight up rather than to the sides.

‘Never seen anything like this,’ Musk says

Musk said Wednesday afternoon on X, “We have now confirmed that the explosion was caused by very large fireworks and/or a bomb carried in the bed of the rented Cybertruck and is unrelated to the vehicle itself. All vehicle telemetry was positive at the time of the explosion.”

Musk said in an earlier post on the platform that his entire senior term was investigating the explosion, adding, “We’ve never seen anything like this.”

Musk has recently become a member of Trump’s inner circle and attended a New Year’s Eve party at the Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida that the president-elect did not attend.

“This is a Tesla truck, and we know that Elon Musk is working with president-elect Trump, and it’s the Trump Tower,” McMahill said when reporters asked about possible political connections. “So there’s obviously things to be concerned about and it’s something we continue to look at.”

The truck explosion came hours after a driver rammed a truck into a crowd in New Orleans’ famed French Quarter early on New Year’s Day, killing at least 15 people before being shot to death by police. That crash was being investigated as a terrorist attack and police believe the driver was not acting alone.

“We are absolutely investigating any connectivity to what happened in New Orleans as well as other attacks that have been occurring around the world,” said Sheriff McMahill. “We aren’t ruling anything out.”

Witness heard 3 explosions

In Las Vegas, witness Ana Bruce, visiting from Brazil, said she heard three explosions.

“The first one where we saw the fire, the second one, I guess, was the battery or something like that, and the third was the big one that smoked the entire area and was the moment when everyone was told to evacuate and stay away,” Bruce said.

Her travel companion, Alcides Antunes, showed video he took of flames lapping the sides of the silver-coloured vehicle.

The 64-storey hotel is just off the Las Vegas Strip and across the street from the Fashion Show Las Vegas shopping mall.

Eric Trump, a son of the president-elect and executive vice-president of the Trump Organization, posted about the fire on X, praising the fire department and local law enforcement “for their swift response and professionalism.”

Published at Wed, 01 Jan 2025 23:11:41 +0000