Just hours before the clock struck midnight on New Year’s Eve, Jack Bech was on the phone with his older brother Martin – an avid outdoorsman and former football star known mostly as “Tiger” to friends and teammates.
Jack, 22, was in Dallas visiting family members, while Tiger, a 28-year-old former Princeton student living in New York, was in New Orleans getting ready to celebrate the New Year.
We just thought it would be another conversation, he told the BBC. – I showed him what we eat, and he showed us what he eats.
The two brothers would never speak again.
“I hung up the phone and that was the last time I spoke to him,” Jack recalled.
Tiger was among 14 people killed when a gunman made his way through a crowd on Bourbon Street in New Orleans.
The attacker, 42-year-old army veteran Shamsud-Din Jabbar, was killed in a shootout with police after drove a pickup truck into a crowdaccording to the authorities. Although he posted videos online before the attack in which he professed allegiance to the Islamic State group, FBI officials said they believed he acted alone.
And while the identities of all the victims have not yet been published, the picture is slowly emerging groups of mostly young peoplemany of whom – like Tiger – were Louisiana natives.
Jack – who remembers his brother as a best friend, role model and inspiration – says the close-knit Bech family will never be the same.
Most of the families are in the city of Lafayette, about 136 miles (218 km) away from New Orleans.
“This is something we will have to deal with. Every time we wake up, and every time we go to sleep, there will be something,” he added. “Every holiday there will be an empty seat at the table.”
But Tiger said his brother “wouldn’t want us to grieve and grieve.” Instead, he encouraged his family to remember him as a “fighter.”
“He would want us to keep attacking life … he would want us to go and be there for each other,” he said.
“I told my family that instead of seeing him a few times a year, he would be with us every moment,” Jack added. “Whenever we wake up and go to sleep and walk, when we’re at work, doing anything, he’ll be with us.”
Among the other victims of the attack in the early morning hours of January 1 was Matthew Tenedorio, an audio-visual technician at Caesars’ Superdome in New Orleans.
Tenedorio, who just turned 25 in October, spent the earlier part of the evening at his brother’s house in the town of Slidell, about 35 minutes from New Orleans.
With him were his father and mother – who had only recently recovered from cancer.
His cousin, Christina Bounds, told the BBC that his family “begged” him not to go to New Orleans, fearing the crowds and potential dangers.
Despite their pleas, he left, along with two friends. When word got out, his mother eventually got hold of one of them.
“They said they were walking down Bourbon and saw a body fall,” she said, noting that they now believe it was a body that was blown up by the gunman’s truck.
Amid the screams and gunfire, Tenedorio was separated from his friends.
His family says he was shot and believed to have been killed during an exchange of gunfire between the gunman and police on Bourbon Street.
The BBC is unable to independently verify this claim.
According to Mrs. Bounds, the family’s tragedy was made even more painful by the slow, almost non-existent communication they had with the local authorities.
“We couldn’t get any information about when the aunt is [Tenedorio’s mother, Cathy] he showed up at the hospital,” she said. “There was no information from doctors, hospitals or the police. Nobody.”
“They don’t have any information, and that’s the part that makes everybody angry. We don’t even know what happened,” Bounds added. “Was he taken away by an ambulance? Was he in an ambulance? Did he die instantly?”
These answers, she added, would “help people accept” what happened.
“But now it’s like a total shock,” she added. “It doesn’t register.”
The family started a GoFundMe page to raise funds for Tenedori’s funeral costs – which Ms Bounds said were hampered by his mother’s significant medical bills during her cancer diagnosis.
Another of Tenedori’s cousins, Zach Colgan, remembers him as a “crazy guy” who was quick to joke, cared deeply about animals and was an avid storyteller.
“He cared. He was definitely a man for the people. A jolly guy,” Colgan told the BBC. “It’s sad that he was taken by a terrorist attack … no family should have to bury their son, especially for something so senseless.”
Mr. Colgan, who has experience working with police in Louisiana, said he believed the officers did the best they could in an extremely busy situation with the victims.
“I know it’s chaotic. But part of the closure is getting answers. I know my aunt and uncle couldn’t get much other than ‘yes – Matthew was killed,'” he said.
“It would be nice to know something more,” added Mr. Colgan. “If it was my child, I’d want to know.”
Even as his family continues to search for answers, Mr. Colgan says he hopes the government and the public will continue to focus on the victims, rather than the law enforcement response or what else could have been done to prevent the attack.
“I want each of them to be remembered,” he said. “They didn’t deserve this. Nobody deserves this.”
