An abrupt start to the new year began when a truck ran through a crowd in New Orleans, killing 14 and injuring over 50 others. The attack, just hours after midnight on January 1, was perpetrated by 42 year-old Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar, who died after a subsequent shootout with local police.
The truck was able to enter Bourbon Street by ramming through barriers meant to contain the festivities, which has caused uproar and a demand for increased security in New Orleans in the wake of the incident. Anne Fitzpatrick, Superintendent of the New Orleans Police Department, expressed frustration at Jabbar’s ability to counteract the barriers. “We had a car there, we had barriers there, we had officers there, and he still got around,” she said.
Jabbar, a resident of Houston, rented an electric Ford pickup truck and drove it to New Orleans, where, preceding his attack, he released videos proclaiming his support for ISIS, a terrorist organization. Jabbar, however, did not commit the attack with official ISIS support. “He was hellbent on creating the carnage and the damage that he did,” Kirkpatrick said.
Despite the scare to New Orleans residents and Americans at large, Jabbar was confirmed to have acted alone, and other methods of terrorism, including IEDs, were safely disarmed. Bourbon Street would later reopen the immediate Thursday, and, in the wake of the attack, increased security measures, including more fortified road barriers, were implemented to prevent future attempts from occurring.
To further disturb the new year, in an unrelated event, a Tesla Cybertruck exploded in Las Vegas in front of a Trump International Hotel. The explosion was caused by Matthew Livelsberger, who was a soldier from Colorado. It seemed his primary goal was to bring attention to the wrongs of the government and his own personal grudges against the political system. While this event was not at all related to the New Orleans attack, it seems more people in the country are resorting to acts of violence as a way of speaking out.