New Orleans seeks return to normality after New Year’s massacre

A combination of law enforcement officers, street performers and soccer fans filled the streets with New Orleans while the city returns to normal y mourn for the victims of the New Year’s massacre in which an army veteran ran over several people who celebrated the party with a truck.

The attack of Bourbon Street left 14 people dead, including the driver, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, who authorities said was inspired by the ISIS militant group. Jabbar was killed in a shootout with police after driving his truck at high speed around a barricade and into the crowd. About 30 people were injured.

Authorities finished examining the scene Thursday morning, removing the last bodies. Bourbon Street — world famous for its music, outdoor drinking and party atmosphere — reopened for business in the early afternoon.

On the same block where the attack took place, trombonist and lifelong New Orleans native Jonas Green said it was important to his band. be there the day after the violence.

“I know that with this music, it heals, it transforms the feelings that we’re going through into something better,” Green said. “We have to move forward.”

The Sugar Bowl college football game between Notre Dame and Georgia, which was postponed one day for national security reasons, was played on Thursday night.

The Joan of Arc parade in the French Quarter still scheduled for monday to kick off the carnival season before Mardi Gras, said Antoinette de Alteriis, one of the organizers. He said they expect close to their typical crowd of around 30,000 participants.

The FBI has continued to search for clues about Jabbar, but a day after launching its investigation, the agency said it was confident that he was not helped by anyone more in the attack, which killed an 18-year-old aspiring nurse, a single mother, a father of two and a former Princeton University football star, among others.

The FBI said that hours before the attack, Jabbar, a 42-year-old U.S. citizen from Texas, posted five videos on his Facebook account proclaiming his support for the Islamic State group and anticipating the violence it would soon unleash in the notorious district of the French Quarter.

It was the deadliest ISIS-inspired assault on U.S. soil in years, and it laid bare what federal officials have warned is a resurgent international terrorist threat.

It also comes as the FBI and other agencies prepare to a drastic change in leadership, and probable policy changes, following the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump’s government. He will take office on January 20.

Christopher Raia, deputy assistant director of the FBI’s counterterrorism division, emphasized that there was no indication of a connection between the New Orleans attack and the detonation on Wednesday of a Tesla Cybertruck packed with explosives outside Trump’s hotel in Las Vegas.

Plans for the New Orleans attack also included placing crude bombs in the neighborhood in an apparent attempt to cause more carnage, authorities said.

Two improvised explosive devices left in coolers several blocks away were neutralized on the scene. Other devices were determined to be non-functional.

The researchers were also trying to understand more about Jabbar’s radicalization path, which, they say, culminated when he decided to rent a van in Houston on December 30 and drive it to New Orleans the next night.

The FBI recovered a black ISIS flag from Jabbar’s rental vehicle and reviewed five videos posted to Facebook, including one in which he said he originally planned to harm his family and friends but was concerned that news headlines would not focus on the “war between believers and non-believers,” Raia said.

Jabbar also stated that he joined ISIS before last summer and provided a last will and testament, the FBI said.

Jabbar joined the Army in 2007, serving in human resources and information technology and deploying to Afghanistan from 2009 to 2010, the service said. He transferred to the Army Reserve in 2015 and left the service in 2020 with the rank of staff sergeant.

A U.S. government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly, said Jabbar traveled to Egypt in 2023, remaining in Cairo. for a weekbefore returning to the United States and then traveling to Toronto for three days. It was not yet clear what he did during those trips.

Abdur-Rahim Jabbar, Jabbar’s younger brother, told The Associated Press on Thursday that “it doesn’t seem real” that his brother could have done this.

“I never would have thought it would be him,” he said. “It’s completely different from him.”

He said that his brother He had been isolated in recent years, but he had also been in contact with him recently and did not see any signs of radicalization.

On Bourbon Street, flowers and candles were placed in memory of the victims, while yellow poles were installed in the surrounding streets.

On Thursday night, bouncers danced to music coming from clubs, tourists posed for photos and street performers preparing to jump over a line of people had no trouble attracting a massive audience.

Mark Tabor, the manager of 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 the streets, but It’s like everything has been forgotten“, said. “It’s sad.”