January 3, 2025: New Orleans attack news

Our live coverage of the New Orleans attack has ended for the day. Scroll though the posts below to catch up, and read about the victims here.

About a year before he drove a truck up Bourbon Street in New Orleans, killing at least 14 and injuring dozens, an account bearing Shamsud-Din Jabbar’s name uploaded three audio files discussing religious views to online audio platform Soundcloud.

The voice heard in the clips matches other videos of Jabbar that CNN has authenticated. The account has a shortened form of his name and says the user is located in Houston, where Jabbar resided.

They are currently the most direct glimpses into Jabbar’s religious views and own personal interpretation of Islam.

In one of the files, Jabbar likens music and playing instruments to “Satan’s Voice,” which was the title he gave the file.

“Satan’s voice is also the misleading of people from Allah’s way,” he continued.

Jabbar also said he believed that musical instruments have an “effect … on the heart.” That effect, he said, “gradually drives a person to” things he believed “God has made forbidden to us.”

Members of the House of Representatives stand for a moment of silence to acknowlegde the victims of the terrorist attack in New Orleans during the first day of the 119th Congress in the House Chamber at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, on January 3.

In his first remarks after being reelected as House speaker on Friday, Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana called for a moment of silence to mark the New Year’s Day terror attack in New Orleans.

The attacker was seen planting two improvised explosive devices hidden in blue coolers along Bourbon Street early Wednesday morning, as seen in surveillance video.

See the visual timeline of how the attack unfolded.

Nikyra Cheyenne Dedeaux

Nikyra Cheyenne Dedeaux, 18, was the type of person who’d make it her mission to make someone feel better.

“If you were sad, she would cheer you up, no matter what. She would make that her main goal. She was just amazing, man,” her friend Zion Parsons told CNN’s Anderson Cooper.

Parsons was on Bourbon Street with Dedeaux when the “giant Ford F150 just came barreling down the road.”

“It barely missed me and her friend and happened to get her,” he said.

They had come from Gulfport, Mississippi, to celebrate the new year.
Her mother didn’t want her to go.

“When your parents say don’t go anywhere please listen to them … this was an act of terrorism and now my baby is gone y’all,” her mother Melissa Dedeaux wrote on Facebook. “My baby is gone she is no longer with us.”

She told NOLA.com her daughter graduated from Harrison Central High School in Gulfport last year and planned to start a nursing program on January 13.

Melissa Dedeaux said her daughter was “the sweetest person” and was very popular.

Parsons said he met Nikyra Dedeaux at a pool party about a year ago and they had become close friends over the last few months.

“We started hanging out a few months ago and I just, I knew, I saw why people wanted to be around her. She was just so amazing,” Parsons said.

The current New Orleans City Council president has put into motion the creation of a fact-finding committee to review the New Year’s Day Bourbon Street terror attack “and its implications.”

According to a memo provided to CNN by a source close to the city council, President Helena Moreno requested that incoming city council president, JP Morrell, follow through on the “important fact-finding committee” when he takes office.

“This committee will play a crucial role in assessing our current policies, enhancing security measures, and ensuring that we are adequately prepared to respond to any future threats,” Moreno’s memo reads.

CNN has reached out to Morrell for comment.

Jacqueline Kennedy posted a plea early Thursday morning to help find her brother Terrence “Terry” Kennedy, 63, who’d been celebrating on Bourbon Street and was missing after the January 1 attack.

That night, she shared a tragic update on Facebook:

Jacqueline and her sister LaTonya Kennedy told CNN affiliate WDSU that the Orleans Parish Coroner’s Officer had called to inform them that he was one of the victims.

Jacqueline Kennedy told WDSU that she’d talked to her brother before the attack.

Terrence ‘Terry’ Kennedy

Terry was one of nine siblings and loved the city of New Orleans, WDSU reported.

“He had his own way, being comical, you know, but he was so loving and kind. You could get him to do anything. I’m going to miss my brother,” Jacqueline Kennedy said.

Correction: An earlier version of this post misspelled the victim’s first name.

After separate deadly New Year’s Day incidents in New Orleans and Las Vegas involving vehicles from Turo, the company’s CEO on Friday said there were no “red flags” about the drivers who used the peer-to-peer car-sharing service.

In an interview with CNBC, CEO Andre Haddad reiterated the alleged attacker in New Orleans and the driver of a Cybertruck that exploded outside Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas were decorated members of the military. The company, which says it runs background checks on its customers, had previously confirmed before they rented the cars that both drivers had a valid driver’s license, and one was honorably discharged.

The car rental platform ingests more than 50 data points into its algorithms, Haddad explained. That includes characteristics of Turo users from vehicle horsepower to details about renters and where the rental car is located and when the car was booked. The data is used to compile risk scores for Turo users, according to a Friday statement.

He said the company’s focus has been on dealing with the aftermath of the attacks and cooperating with law enforcement to assist with the investigations.

Keep reading.

President Joe Biden told reporters Friday in the Oval Office that he has spoken to families of the victims of the deadly attack in New Orleans.

“Yes I have,” Biden said when asked if he’s talked with family members.

“I’ll talk about it later,” he added.

Biden and first lady Jill Biden are expected to visit New Orleans on Monday, the White House previously announced.

Federal security agencies advised law enforcement to be on the lookout for potential copycat attacks after 14 people were killed on Bourbon Street on New Year’s Day, according to a joint intelligence bulletin issued Thursday.

The FBI and DHS routinely share potential threat indicators with law enforcement agencies across the country following significant security incidents in the US and abroad.

“We remain concerned that a similar increase in vehicle-ramming attacks will follow the terrorist attack in New Orleans; along with other recent, deadly vehicle-ramming incidents around the world,” the bulletin said.

The bulletin comes only weeks after the two federal agencies issued a warning of the threat of violence from lone offenders around the holidays and the potential use of vehicle ramming.

In a statement to CNN, a Homeland Security spokesperson said the department is working closely with law enforcement partners to evaluate threats during this heightened threat level.

On alert in DC: Federal and local law enforcement said they are monitoring any threats to Washington, DC, ahead of three major events — the certification of the Electoral College vote on Monday as well as former President Jimmy Carter’s funeral on Thursday and the inauguration of Donald Trump later this month — while watching for potential copycats inspired by the massacre in New Orleans.

“We’re always concerned about any behavior that may drive other violent behavior,” David Sundberg, the assistant director in charge of the FBI’s DC field office, told CNN. “The FBI will continue to look for any intelligence that might let us discover a plan to commit a violent act, whether it’s individually or as a large group.”

CNN’s Holmes Lybrand contributed reporting.

This post has been updated with additional information.

Tiger Bech’s high school football coach says he is heartbroken by his former student’s death in the New Orleans New Year’s terror attack, but he will remember their last visit together over the holiday.

Tiger Bech

“I saw him right before Christmas when he came into town,” Marty Cannon, who is now principal of St. Thomas More Catholic High School in Lafayette, Louisiana, told CNN’s Pamela Brown Friday, “and right off the bat he wanted to know about my family, he wanted to know how our school was doing, he wanted to know how I was doing in my role as principal. He was that kind of guy.”

After his high school graduation, Bech, 27, played three years at Princeton University, primarily as a kick returner. Princeton coach Bob Surace said in a statement that Bech was “a ferocious competitor with endless energy, a beloved teammate and a caring friend.”

Cannon told CNN that Bech loved to return to his hometown, and he is grateful to have gotten a final opportunity to see his former player.

“I can imagine that this is going to bring some healing long-term that he got to spend this Christmas season with his family,” said Cannon.

Trevor Neill, who served with Shamsud-Din Jabbar while stationed in Fort Gordon in Georgia, said he was “absolutely floored” when he heard his old friend had killed 14 people while driving through a crowd in New Orleans Wednesday.

“He was a normal individual, no red flags, great soldier, phenomenal friend,” Neill told CNN affiliate KHOU about the suspect.

The Canal Street entry point to the New Orleans’ French Quarter was the only one wide enough for a vehicle to get onto Bourbon Street using the sidewalk, while subsequent corners “would be far too narrow,” according to Rep. Troy Carter, from Louisiana’s 2nd Congressional District.

“So, the only place that they could have gained access on the sidewalk, would have been at Canal Street. Which lends me to wonder how long had this plot been being hatched? Had he cased the area to determine that this was a weak point?” Carter questioned.

“In the coming days, weeks, and months, we’ll be able to answer those questions, but even faster than that, we’ll be sealing any possibility for a breach going forward,” Carter assured, noting commitments from President Joe Biden, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry and New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell to do so.

As President Joe Biden prepares to visit New Orleans early next week following the deadly Bourbon Street attack, the incoming president of the city council is hoping for more information on how the federal government will help in the aftermath.

Morrell promised earlier Friday to devote city resources to a “deep-dive investigation” into the work to replace existing security barriers on Bourbon Street with new ones, leaving the tourist-heavy area particularly vulnerable on New Year’s.

City leaders also want more information on why attacker Shamsud-Din Jabbar was not caught after leaving multiple videos starting about two hours prior to the attack, with a final video only minutes before he killed 14 people.

Some background: A report from security consultants commissioned by the French Quarter Management District five years ago said the city’s bollard system protecting Bourbon Street “should be improved,” but Morrell told CNN that was news to him.

“This new council came in in 2022, so we were not aware that there was a 2019 report,” Morrell said.

President Joe Biden speaks during an event in the State Dining Room at the White House on Thursday, January 2.

President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden are expected to visit New Orleans on Monday, a White House official tells CNN.

The visit will come five days after a terror attack killed 14 people and wounded dozens more along the city’s famed Bourbon Street in the early hours of New Year’s Day.

The trip will mark one of the final displays of Biden as a consoler-in-chief, a role he’s stepped into several times during his four years in office. The president told reporters on Thursday that he was “gonna try” to visit the city in the aftermath of the attack.

The president has pledged federal resources to assist the investigation into the attack and has expressed the country’s solidarity with the people of New Orleans and those mourning the loss of their loved ones.

“Today, all of America stands with the people of New Orleans– we pray for those killed and injured in yesterday’s attack, and we’re grateful, we’re grateful to those brave first responders who raced to save lives,” Biden said in a message ahead of the Sugar Bowl, where the University of Notre Dame defeated the University of Georgia Thursday. “We’re glad the game is back on for today, but I’m not surprised, because the spirit of New Orleans can never be kept down, and that’s also true for the spirit of America.”

A person’s absorption of “what ISIS is selling” is significantly more difficult to stop than organized efforts like those seen on 9/11, CNN senior national security analyst Juliette Kayyem and CNN counterterrorism analyst Philip Mudd explained.

“Some of the most persistent challenges in terms of counter terrorism and counter insurgency over the decades, are people inspired by religion, because, of course, they believe that God is speaking to them, saying that there’s a divine need for you to go act – in this case, in Bourbon Street,” Mudd told CNN’s Sara Sidner.

“Especially in the age of YouTube videos, where a preacher can speak to you for years, this persistence of a religious message that says, ‘If you don’t act, you’re not living according to the Word of God,’ that’s going to be with us for a long time.”

Shamsud-Din Jabbar’s radicalization “may have been very, very quick,” Kayyem said. “He’s dealing with a lot of issues: divorce, money, professional issues. He’s older than your average recruit. And what it appears now, is that (in) the military he may have been fine – it was getting out into the civilian world. He’s lost. He needs to find meaning … ISIS fills that vacuum for some of these people.”

The New Orleans City Council is still trying to answer why Bourbon Street lacked permanent security bollards on the morning of the deadly New Year’s Day attack, Councilman JP Morrell says.

City leaders have said existing barricades were being removed and replaced in preparation for hosting Super Bowl LIX on February 9, with a single police cruiser used to block the entrance to Bourbon Street for New Year’s Eve.

Shamsud-Din Jabbar drove his truck onto the sidewalk, bypassing the police barrier, investigators said.

Family members of the suspected terror attacker who killed 14 revelers in New Orleans said the man they knew is completely different from the one who drove a pickup truck into a crowd on Bourbon Street.

Abdur and his 65-year-old father, Rahim, said they never saw any signs of someone who was radicalized and hatching a deadly plot.

“Something screwed him up. He’s not this type of person,” Abdur said. “Someone or something fogged his mind.”

“That’s what’s puzzling us,” Rahim told CNN. “He wasn’t going through something that we knew of,” later adding, “It’s all around bad for everybody.”

Abdur said he got home Wednesday morning after working the night shift at a railroad company when he got a call from another relative saying Shamsud-Din Jabbar had been identified as the attacker. Abdur thought there must have been a mistake until he saw his brother’s face on the news.

Shamsud-Din Jabbar

“I was shocked that somebody so close to me could cause all this destruction,” he said. “I feel for those people over there — and that had to witness it.”

Abdul said his brother, who had three children and two ex-wives, never let on that anything was bothering him or that he was in any financial trouble. The pair were not close growing up because of their age gap but connected after their father suffered a stroke in August 2023 and then spoke almost daily. They became closer, with the older brother offering career guidance and life advice.

They never spoke of ISIS, Abdur said.

Shamsud-Din Jabbar’s father said he lamented not having a chance to talk his son out of the attack.

“How do you know what to do if they don’t tell you,” Rahim said, adding that they were close. “We would have certainly tried, because we knew it wouldn’t have been a good ending.”

Abdur says he still views Shamsud-Din Jabbar as kind and compassionate, despite the attack.

“I’m in no way condoning what he did. What he did wasn’t right,” Abdur said. “But there’s still a line between what he did and him being the human being and the brother he was to me.”

Trauma psychologists treating victims and witnesses of the attack are seeing “a lot of acute stress responses,” Erika Rajo, one of the team members, told CNN’s Sara Sidner.

“Some people are having intrusive thoughts about what happened, a lot of grief and mourning,” Rajo said. “Some people are having physical symptoms. A lot of people are reminded of the trauma from TV or just being in New Orleans.”

The team is helping people process the trauma, express emotions, and cope through techniques like deep breathing, Rajo said.

A man prays at a memorial on Bourbon Street, after it reopened to the public on January 2.

In the early hours of New Year’s Day, an attacker rammed a pickup truck into a crowd of people on New Orleans’ famed Bourbon Street, killing 14 people and wounding dozens more.

Here’s what we know about the victims killed in the attack.

The FBI said the attack by Shamsud-Din Jabbar was an “act of terrorism.” The agency said he was “100% inspired by ISIS” and that they would investigate his “path to radicalization.”

Jabbar, who was killed in a firefight with police, was an Army veteran from Texas.

Here’s what we know about the investigation: