How the New Orleans truck attack unfolded on the famous Bourbon Street

CNN
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The new year was only three hours old, the chorus of “Auld Lang Syne” and the sound of fireworks still ringing in the ears of the revelers, when the pickup speed down Bourbon Street – the beating heart of the French Quarter.

Jimmy Cothran and a friend had just entered a nightclub in New Orleans when a group of young women crowded in and took refuge under the tables.

“We weren’t taking any chances,” said Cothran, a 15-year resident of South Louisiana. They ran upstairs, to a balcony.

The attack — a brazen car crash that investigators say was an ISIS-inspired act of terrorism — was already over when Cothran peered over the railing to the scene on Bourbon Street below.

“It was just an unimaginable loss,” he told CNN’s Pamela Brown. “The disfigurement and the strewn bodies. Something you can’t see, you’ll never forget.”

The revelers’ paradise had been turned into a killing field at the hands of an American-born Texas military veteran, authorities say. He intended to “run over as many people as he possibly could,” said New Orleans Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick.

At least 14 people were killed, including a 27-year-old former Princeton football player and Louisiana native, a 37-year-old father of two and a 19-year-old University of Alabama student.

Dozens more were injured, including two police officers who were wounded when they confronted the attacker as he exited the truck. He was shot dead.

Cothran, who was locked inside the nightclub, was unable to help despite having first aid training and being CPR certified, he said.

“It was even tougher,” said Cothran, the designated driver that night. “But the fact that these people are somebody’s people and they’re not going to be there this morning — it’s harsh.”

The Big Easy was packed.

Hotels within two miles of Caesars Superdome were nearly full, booked by as many as 75,000 people who had come to town to ring in 2025, to attend concerts or to watch the Georgia Bulldogs face the Notre Dame Fighting Irish in the Sugar Bowl Wednesday evening.

“Go Irish! Go Dawgs,” vendor Jamie Profenno said Tuesday afternoon as she sat in the French Quarter painting oyster shells decked out in Notre Dame’s blue and gold and Georgia’s red. “I’m not going to pick one,” she told CNN affiliate WVUE.

The Sugar Bowl parade started in the French Quarter at 2 p.m., but some revelers had already begun to gather in Jackson Square, CNN affiliate WDSU reported. There, they secured the spots where they would see the fleur-de-lis — the city’s emblem, a flower with three petals — fall 10 hours later, in New Orleans’ version of the Times Square ball.

While New York was plagued by rain, temperatures in New Orleans hovered in the mid-50s, with a breeze.

At midnight, fireworks lit up the skyrising a thousand feet above the Mississippi River before it erupted in a cascade of colors.

‘They need you at Canal and Bourbon’

As the streets remained filled with revelers hours after the New Year began, surveillance footage showed images of a man, later identified as the attacker, walking the streets of the French Quarter between

Two of the photos show him walking along Dauphine Street near Governor Nicholls Street around 2 a.m. in a long, tan coat and jeans.

At 3:16 a.m., a surveillance camera captured a white pickup truck driving northwest on Canal Street. In the footage, people are milling around – a couple get into the back seat of a white SUV, while others stand passively on the median, apparently waiting for the tram.

The truck quickly turns onto Bourbon Street and appears to maneuver around a patrol vehicle with flashing lights. It speeds out of frame and accelerates through a group of people standing outside a corner pharmacy.

April McGee was lying in her hotel room above Bourbon Street and thought the sound of chaos below was fireworks, she told WDSU. But on the street, pedestrians and party-goers were struck by panic.

Kimberly Stricklin of Mobile, Alabama, saw the truck mowing down passengers in a pedicab and later told WDSU she can’t hear the screams. Kevin Garcia saw the vehicle hurtling down the sidewalk, the 22-year-old told CNN, hitting everyone in its path and sending one person flying toward him. Zion Parsons, 18, hid in the gap between two bars as a “real-life horror movie” unfolded in front of him.

“Everything the car hits, it’s thrown — it’s thrown up in the air and away and right under the car,” Parsons told CNN. He was with two friends killing time before they drove home to Gulfport, Mississippi. But when the truck passed, he realized that only one of his friends had been hiding with him. The other was on the street.

“I just start screaming and yelling,” he said.

The truck eventually crashed further down Bourbon. Footage taken outside the Royal Sonesta New Orleans hotel – two blocks north of Canal Street – shows bystanders rushing to a victim lying near the damaged pickup as uniformed officers appear to confront the driver.

Gunshots ring out. Spectators flee.

Over the radio, a New Orleans fire department officer called out to first responders: “Responding to a mass casualty incident. A vehicle has driven into a crowd.”

“They need you,” said the dispatcher, “at Canal and Bourbon.”

Six blocks north, a mob of officers standing outside a nightclub took off and sprinted toward the scene as revelers ducked out of the way under neon signs. From the balcony of a club, Alex Birth-Mitchell captured footage of state police with long guns running down the street as victims of the crash lay motionless on the sidewalk.

“It was absolute chaos,” said Birth-Mitchell, who had just entered the club when the carnage unfolded. He felt “lucky to be alive”.

“If we had waited outside, we might have died,” he said.

By sunrise Wednesday, additional local, state and federal law enforcement had converged in the French Quarter, now an active crime scene. TV reporters took up positions nearby, with photojournalists’ view of the scene blocked by coroners parked at the end of Bourbon Street.

In the rented truck, investigators found an ISIS flag and a potential improvised explosive device, or IED, the FBI said. Other potential IEDs were found elsewhere in the French Quarter.

Authorities identified the attacker as 42-year-old Shamsud-Din Jabbar. In a series of videos that authorities believe he made while driving from Texas to Louisiana, Jabbar said he initially planned to kill his family but changed his plans and joined ISIS, according to multiple officials briefed about the investigation.

In New Orleans, officials urged tourists to continue, to enjoy the city, but to steer clear of Bourbon Street.

Some tried, but the mood outside Café du Monde late Wednesday morning was somber as dozens of customers waited for a seat inside the famous establishment known for its beignets.

The strains of “Auld Lang Syne” were heard again, this time a mournful version blaring from a musician’s tuba outside the café. A customer walked among police officers and handed them cups of coffee.

Georgia and Notre Dame fans were noticeably subdued in their team’s colors. By afternoon, officials had postponed the sugar bowl until Thursday.

Other tourists, such as April and Paul McGee, could not bear the thought of staying a moment longer. They packed their luggage and left their hotel room, ending their trip early.

“We checked out,” she told WDSU. “Someone else can have our room. We don’t want it.”

CNN’s Michael Williams, Sara Smart, Andy Rose, Elizabeth Wolfe, Rebekah Riess, Casey Tolan, Curt Devine, Paul P. Murphy, Avery Schmitz and Jeremy Grisham contributed to this report.