The video shows New Year’s Eve revelers narrowly escaping the path of a speeding pickup truck in New Orleans
NEW ORLEANS – Surveillance camera footage from Bourbon Street shared with Fox News Digital shows terror suspect Shamsud-Din Jabbar speeding his electric Ford F-150 Lightning pickup truck toward a crowd of New Year’s revelers, who narrowly escaped the speeding vehicle, around 3:15 a.m. on Jan. 1.
Authorities fatally shot Jabbar after he drove his vehicle through the crowd, killing 14 people and opening fire on police, which officials described as a terrorist attack.
“A 500-pound vehicle moving at high speed in an urban area is extremely devastating. And it’s a very clear trend that it’s becoming — this tactic of choice among terrorists around the world, as we’ve seen a proliferation of this recently,” said Fox News contributor Paul Mauro. and a former NYPD inspector, for Fox News Digital.
Mauro added that police departments across the country have changed their standard operating procedures because “it’s no longer enough to wait for the feds to do their counterterrorism action.”
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Authorities are patrolling Bourbon Street as it reopens in New Orleans on Thursday. Multiple people were killed after a terrorist drove an electric pickup truck into a crowd of New Year’s revelers early Thursday on Bourbon Street. (Kat Ramirez for Fox News Digital)
Mauro added that “electric vehicles are generally so quiet” that Jabbar may have made a conscious decision to hire an electric vehicle to surprise more victims.
A manager at Krystal, a fast-food restaurant on Bourbon Street, shared surveillance footage with Fox Digital and said the New Year’s Eve celebration in the French Quarter went relatively smoothly compared to previous years. The visitors were having fun, but they weren’t overly rowdy, he recalled.
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Shamsud-Din Jabbar is seen walking near Bourbon Street in New Orleans in surveillance video on Dec. 31. (FBI)
Multiple business employees near the Bourbon Street entrance told Fox News Digital that authorities installed temporary barriers around Christmas to block traffic at certain French Quarter street entrances while the city plans to repair and upgrade its permanent barriers.
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Barricades are seen on Bourbon Street after the reopening of the street in New Orleans on Thursday. (Kat Ramirez for Fox News Digital)
However, the barrier located at the intersection of Canal and Bourbon Streets was not upright on New Year’s Eve, meaning vehicles were able to drive over the flattened barricade and onto Bourbon Street from Canal Street. The video shows Jabbar driving a rental pickup off Canal Street and going around a police vehicle blockade at the Bourbon Street entrance before running into the revelers.
“We have to accept the fact that they were wrong.”
“The lesson is that even if you take prophylactic steps, you can’t ensure a very large event 100%, and we just have to accept that. Now, that being said … we have to accept the fact that they made a mistake,” Mauro said. “You have to wonder: If you have New Year’s Eve in New Orleans — which I’ve actually been to, which is a zoo, you have a bunch of people — then you have the Sugar Bowl, then you have the Super Bowl, then you have Mardis Gras, which made the decision to remove obstacles they had to upgrade?”
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Kevin Scott, a charcoal chef at Felix’s restaurant on Bourbon Street, told Fox News Digital that he was working on New Year’s Eve before the attack and left shortly before Jabbar drove his truck into the revelers. Scott described the crowd as similar to a crowd you might see at Mardi Gras.
The next day, he heard several eyewitness accounts from people who said that “bodies were everywhere” and that people were “screaming and yelling and just running for their lives.”
– It’s a tragedy in New Orleans.
“Coming into the French Quarter, it’s very different now. … It feels different,” Scott said, adding that he felt “very surprised” by the number of people who returned to Bourbon Street Thursday afternoon after officials reopened the area.
Kevin Scott, a charcoal cook at Felix’s restaurant on Bourbon Street, told Fox News Digital that he was working on New Year’s Eve before the attack and had left shortly before Jabbar drove his truck into the crowd of revelers. (Fox News Digital)
Scott broke down, saying his heart goes out to the families of the victims.
“I just wish we could all come together and just…be a better place, a better world,” he said.
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A man kneels at a memorial to those killed in the New Year’s Eve attack on Bourbon Street after the street reopened in New Orleans, Thursday. (Kat Ramirez for Fox News Digital)
Deputy Assistant Director of the FBI Christopher Raia said Thursday that authorities believe Jabbar was motivated by ISIS and acted alone. Officials also located two improvised explosive devices (IEDs) at different locations in the French Quarter following the terror attack. They are placed in refrigerators.
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Before his rampage in New Orleans, Jabbar posted several videos on Facebook expressing his support for the Islamic State (ISIS)the FBI said at a news conference Thursday.
Shamsud Din-Jabbar is shown in an undated photo released by the FBI after he drove his pickup truck down Bourbon Street in New Orleans and died in a shootout with responding officers. (FBI)
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“In the first video, Jabbar explains that he only planned to harm his family and friends, but was worried that the news headlines would not focus on the ‘war between believers and unbelievers,'” Raia said.
Fox News Digital’s Christina Coulter and Louis Casiano contributed to this report.
