Community protection of jubilant New 12 months’s celebration turned to tragedy early this morning, with particular experiences on mass casualties after a automobile rammed into revelers alongside Bourbon Avenue.
Authorities stated that 10 folks had been killed and greater than 30 folks had been injured.
At about 3:15 a.m. ET, a person drove a pickup truck down Bourbon Avenue at a “very quick tempo, and it was very intentional conduct,” stated New Orleans Police Division Supt. Ann Kirkpatrick. “This man was making an attempt to run over as many individuals as he presumably might. It was not a DUI scenario. That is extra advanced and extra severe based mostly on the data we have now proper now.”
She stated that the driving force went round police barricades, and that he was “hellbent on creating the carnage and the injury that he did.”
The perpetrator fired on New Orleans officers “from his automobile when he crashed his automobile,” Kirkpatrick stated. Two officers had been shot and they’re in steady situation, she stated.
NBC Information, quoting an unnamed regulation enforcement official, reported that the suspect is believed to be lifeless.
She stated that greater than 300 officers had been deployed within the space final evening.
Mayor LaToya Cantrell described the incident as a “terrorist assault,” however Aletha Duncan, the assistant particular agent in control of the FBI, later instructed reporters that “this isn’t a terrorist occasion.”
President Joe Biden was briefed this morning on the information, and the White Home has been in contact with Cantrell to supply help. The FBI will probably be taking on the investigation, Kirkpatrick stated.
The FBI stated it was investigating at the least one suspected improvised explosive machine on the scene, Duncan stated.
The incident occurred simply hours earlier than the beginning of the Sugar Bowl on the metropolis’s Superdome.
All the broadcast networks went to particular experiences together with cable information protection, pushing lighter segments from morning exhibits.
Extra to return.
