How an ‘unimaginable’ truck attack unfolded on one of America’s most famous streets

(CNN) — The new year was just three hours old, the chorus of “Auld Lang Syne” and the sound of fireworks still ringing in the ears of merrymakers, when the pickup sped down Bourbon Street – the beating heart of the French Quarter.

Jimmy Cothran and a friend had just stepped into a New Orleans nightclub when a group of young women pushed their way inside and sought refuge beneath the tables.

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

The attack – a brazen car-ramming that investigators say was an ISIS-inspired act of terrorism – was already over by the time Cothran looked over the railing to the scene on Bourbon Street below.

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

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

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 fatally shot.

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

“That 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 rough.”

A celebratory atmosphere before attack

The Big Easy was packed.

Hotels within two miles of the Caesars Superdome were nearly filled, booked by as many as 75,000 people who’d descended on the city to ring in 2025, to attend concerts or to watch the Georgia Bulldogs face the Notre Dame Fighting Irish in the Sugar Bowl Wednesday night.

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

The Sugar Bowl parade kicked off in the French Quarter at 2 p.m., but some merrymakers had already started to gather at Jackson Square, CNN affiliate WDSU reported. There, they secured the spots where they’d watch the fleur-de-lis – the city’s emblem, a three-petaled flower – drop 10 hours later, in New Orleans’ version of the Times Square ball drop.

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

At midnight, fireworks lit up the sky, rising a thousand feet above the Mississippi River before erupting in a cascade of colors.

‘They need you at Canal and Bourbon’

As the streets remained packed with partygoers 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 1 a.m. and 2 a.m.

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

At 3:16 a.m., a surveillance camera captured a white pickup driving northwest on Canal Street. In the footage, people are milling about – a couple gets into the backseat of white SUV, while others stand idly on the median, apparently waiting for the streetcar.

The truck quickly turns onto Bourbon Street, appearing to maneuver around a patrol vehicle with its lights flashing. It speeds out of frame, accelerating through a group of people standing outside a pharmacy on the corner.

Lying in her hotel room above Bourbon Street, April McGee thought the sound of chaos below was fireworks, she told WDSU. But on the street, pedestrians and partiers were stricken with panic.

Kimberly Stricklin, of Mobile, Alabama, saw the truck mow down passengers in a pedicab, telling WDSU later she can’t unhear the screams. Kevin Garcia watched the vehicle careen down the sidewalk, the 22-year-old told CNN, striking 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” played out before him.

“Everything the car is hitting, it’s getting thrown – it’s getting thrown up into the air and away and just 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 only one of his friends had hidden with him. The other was lying in the street – one of the attack’s 14 fatalities.

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

The truck eventually crashed farther down Bourbon. Footage captured 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. Bystanders flee.

Over the radio, a New Orleans Fire Department dispatcher called out to first responders: “Responding to a mass casualty incident. A vehicle ran into a crowd of people.”

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

Six blocks north, a crowd of officers standing outside a nightclub took off, sprinting toward the scene as partygoers ducked out of their way beneath neon signs. From a club’s balcony, Alex Birth-Mitchell captured footage of state police with long guns running down the street, as victims of the accident lie motionless on the pavement.

“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 would have been waiting outside, we would be dead, maybe,” he said.

The aftermath

By sunrise Wednesday, additional local, state and federal law enforcement had converged on the French Quarter, now an active crime scene. TV reporters got in place nearby, with photojournalists’ views of the scene blocked by coroner vans parked at the end of Bourbon Street.

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

On the rented truck’s trailer hitch was an ISIS flag, the FBI said. After the attack, authorities found two improvised explosive devices they believe the attacker placed on Bourbon Street just an hour or two before the assault, the FBI has said.

The FBI believes the assailant planned on using a transmitter to set off the two explosives, the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said in a joint statement Friday.

The transmitter was found in the truck, the bureaus said. The explosives were never set off and were safely contained by authorities after being discovered.

The bureaus also said the attacker had set a fire at the short-term rental location he was using nearby. The ATF found the attacker intended to destroy evidence, some of which, including “pre-cursors for bomb making material and a privately made device suspected of being a silencer for a rifle,” were recovered by authorities.

In the hours after the attack, officials in New Orleans urged tourists to carry on, 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 sounding from the tuba of a musician outside the café. A customer walked among police officers, handing them cups of coffee.

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

Other tourists, such as April and Paul McGee, couldn’t stomach 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. “Somebody 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, Holmes Lybrand and Jeremy Grisham contributed to this report.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2025 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.