New Orleans inches toward normalcy while mourning victims of deadly New Year’s rampage
NEW ORLEANS– Street performers and football fans returned to the streets of New Orleans as the city slowly returned to normality, while mourning the victims of the disaster deadly New Year’s disaster in which an army veteran plowed a pickup truck into revelers.
Fourteen people were killed in the attack along Bourbon Street, officials said inspired by the militant group Islamic State. The driver, Shamsud-Din Jabbarwas fatally shot during a shootout with police after steering his speeding truck around a barricade and crashing into the crowd. About 30 people were injured.
Authorities finished processing the scene and removing the last of the bodies Thursday morning. Bourbon Street – famous worldwide for its music, open-air drinking and festive atmosphere – reopened for business in the early afternoon.
On the same block where the attack occurred, Jonas Green, a trombonist and lifelong New Orleans resident, said it was important for his band to be there the day after the violence.
“I know that this music heals, that it turns the feelings we’re going through into something better,” Green said. “I have to keep going.”
The Sugar Bowl college football game between Notre Dame and Georgiawhich was postponed by one day in the interest of national security, was played on Thursday evening.
The Joan of Arc parade in the French Quarter was scheduled to take place on Monday to kick off the carnival season leading up to Mardi Gras, said Antoinette de Alteriis, one of the organizers. She said they expect a typical crowd of thousands.
In other developments, the White House said President Joe Biden would travel to New Orleans next week. The president and first lady planned to visit Monday to “mourn with the families and community members affected by the tragic attack.”
The FBI continued to look for clues about Jabbar, but a day after the investigation the agency said it was confident he was not assisted by anyone else in the attack that left people dead. an 18-year-old aspiring nurseincluding a single mother, father of two and former Princeton University football star.
The FBI said Jabbar, a 42-year-old U.S. citizen from Texas, posted five videos to his Facebook account hours before the attack expressing his support for the Islamic State group and previewing the violence he would soon unleash. the famous French Quarter.
It was the deadliest IS-inspired attack on US soil in years, with federal officials warning it is a reemerging international terrorism threat. It also comes as the FBI and other agencies brace for dramatic leadership changes and likely policy shifts after President Donald Trump’s newly elected administration takes power.
Christopher Raia, the deputy assistant director of the FBI’s counterterrorism division, emphasized that there is no evidence of a link between the attack in New Orleans and Wednesday’s explosion of a Tesla Cybertruck. full of fireworks outside Trump’s Las Vegas hotel.
The attack plans in New Orleans also include planting crude bombs nearby in an apparent attempt to cause more carnage, officials said. Two improvised explosive devices left in coolers several blocks apart were made safe at the scene. Other devices were determined to be non-functional.
Researchers also sought to understand more about Jabbar’s path to radicalization, which they say culminated in him. pick up a rented truck in Houston on December 30 and drove to New Orleans the next night.
The FBI recovered a black ISIS flag from Jabbar’s rented pickup truck and reviewed five videos posted to Facebook, including one in which he said he originally intended to harm his family and friends but ended up worried that news headlines would not focus on the “war between the believers and the unbelievers,” Raia said.
Jabbar also stated that he had joined ISIS before last summer and had made a will, the FBI said.
Jabbar joined the Army in 2007, served on active duty in human resources and information technology and deployed 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.
A US government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to speak publicly, said Jabbar traveled to Egypt in 2023, spending a week in Cairo before returning to the US and then to Toronto traveled. It was not immediately clear what he did during those trips.
Abdur-Rahim Jabbar, Jabbar’s younger brother, told The Associated Press on Thursday that it “doesn’t feel real” that his brother could have done this.
“I never thought it would be him,” he said. “It’s completely different from him.”
He said his brother had been isolated in recent years but had also recently been in contact with him and had seen no signs of radicalization.
On Bourbon Street, flowers and candles were arranged as memorials to the victims, while yellow posts were placed on surrounding blocks. Thursday night, bouncers danced to music blasting from clubs, tourists posed for photos and a group of street performers preparing to turn a line of people had no trouble drawing a huge crowd.
Mark Tabor, the manager of a Willie’s Chicken Shack on Bourbon Street, said it was strange to feel the disconnect between the normal bustle of the French Quarter outside and the violence he had witnessed less than 48 hours earlier.
“I’m glad they cleaned up the streets, but it’s like everything has been forgotten,” he said. “It’s sad.”
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Tucker reported from Washington and Mustian reported from Black Mountain, North Carolina. Associated Press reporters Stephen Smith, Chevel Johnson, Brett Martel and Sharon Lurye in New Orleans; Jeff Martin in Atlanta; Rebecca Santana, Alanna Durkin Richer, Tara Copp and Zeke Miller in Washington; Kristie Rieken in Beaumont, Texas; Darlene Superville in New Castle, Delaware; Colleen Long in West Palm Beach, Florida; Michael R. Sisak in New York; and Hallie Golden in Seattle contributed to this report.