A driver deliberately crashed his truck into a crowd of New Year’s Day revelers in New Orleans and then opened fire, killing 10 people and injuring more than 35, in an attack the FBI said it was investigating as an act of terrorism.
The suspect died after a shootout with police, law enforcement officials said.
“This man was trying to run over as many people as he could,” the city’s police commissioner, Anne Kirkpatrick, said at a televised press conference on Wednesday morning. “He was hell-bent on creating the carnage and the damage that he did.”
The incident occurred at 3:15 a.m. at the intersection of Canal and Bourbon Streets in the city’s French Quarter district.
New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell called the incident a “terrorist attack.”
The FBI said in a statement that it was investigating the incident as an act of terrorism. Initially, Alethea Duncan, an assistant special agent in charge of the FBI’s New Orleans field office, had said it was not a terrorist event.
Duncan said a suspected improvised explosive device was found.
A couple told CBS News that they heard crashing noises coming from down the street and then saw a white truck slam through a barricade “at a high rate of speed.”
President Joe Biden called the city’s mayor to offer full federal support, the White House said in a statement.
“The country woke up this morning to news of a terrible tragedy in New Orleans,” U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement. He said federal law enforcement agencies would “deploy every available resource to conduct this investigation.”
President-elect Donald Trump posted on social media that his incoming administration would “fully support the City of New Orleans as they investigate and recover from this act of pure evil!”
Reuters contributed to the reporting of this story.
