The death toll has risen to 15 after a driver rammed a pickup truck into a crowd of New Year’s revelers on Bourbon Street in New Orleans early Wednesday, the Orleans Parish Coroner said.
More than 30 others were injured in what the FBI is investigating as an act of terrorism.
After the vehicle stopped, the driver emerged and opened fire on responding officers. Police said two officers were wounded and are in stable condition.
At a news conference, New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell called the killings a “terrorist attack,” and New Orleans Police Commissioner Anne Kirkpatrick said the driver was “hell-bent on creating the carnage and the damage that he did.”
The FBI said the driver was killed in a firefight with police following the attack, around 3:15 a.m. on Wednesday.
In a news release, the FBI later identified the driver as 42-year-old Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a U.S. citizen from Texas.
The Associated Press reported Jabbar served in the U.S. Army and deployed to Afghanistan from February 2009 to January 2010, then transferred to the U.S. Army Reserve in 2015. Jabbar left the military in 2020, with the rank of staff sergeant.
Authorities said Jabbar was driving a rented Ford pickup truck that had an ISIS flag on the vehicle.
Federal investigators are “working to determine the subject’s potential associations and affiliations with terrorist organizations,” the FBI news release said.
Weapons and a potential IED were found inside the vehicle, authorities said. Other potential IEDs were also located in the French Quarter.
The attack happened just hours before the city was expected to host The Sugar Bowl less than a mile away. The annual college football game, which draws fans from all over the country, was postponed in the wake of the violence.
Kevin Garcia, one of the bystanders who witnessed the attack told CNN that he saw a truck slamming into people on a sidewalk and heard gunshots.
“A body came flying at me,” Garcia said.
While Whit Davis told the network that he heard people yelling and running to the back as he was leaving a nightclub.
“When they finally let us out of the club, police waved us where to walk and were telling us to get out of the area fast. I saw a few dead bodies they couldn’t even cover up and tons of people receiving first aid,” said Davis.
The injured were taken to five hospitals, the city’s emergency preparedness department said.
The White House said President Joe Biden has been briefed on the incident.
Watch local news coverage on the incident below:
