Fifteen people were killed and at least 30 more injured after a man drove a pickup truck into a crowd of New Year’s revelers on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, Louisiana, before opening fire with a rifle.
The incident occurred around 3 a.m. local time and there is no possibility of “a DUI thing,” Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick, the police commissioner of New Orleans, said in a statement. The suspect was driving “very fast… trying to run over as many people as he could,” she added.
Videos by VICE
“He was hellbent on creating the carnage and the damage that he did,” police explained of the suspect.
Initially, New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell described the horrific event as a “terrorist attack.” An FBI agent then claimed it was “not a terrorist event.” The agency, however, is now investigating the tragedy “as an act of terrorism,” Reuters reported. Officials confirmed an improvised explosive device was found at the scene.
The suspect, armed with a rifle, helmet, and body armor, died in a gunfire exchange with police, officials told The Guardian.
In a post on X, Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry wrote that “A horrific act of violence took place on Bourbon Street,” adding that he was “praying for all the victims and first responders on scene.”
Jay McGuffy, a visitor in New Orleans, told The Guardian that she was in a nightclub at the time of the attack. “We were just having fun, celebrating New Year’s, and then they told us to get out ‘cause somebody had got shot. Then we heard that a truck had been through here, and fifteen people had been shot,” she said.
McGuffy explained that she was not allowed back to her hotel because there were still dead and injured bodies on the ground. “How did this happen? There are like 100 cops out here”, she added.
