New Orleans authorities made preparations to reopen Bourbon Street Thursday after Wednesday morning’s terror attack, with memorials to the victims and new security barriers to protect fans attending the Sugar Bowl game.
Investigators have said that the suspect in the attack, 42-year-old Shamsud-Din Jabbar, drove a rented pickup truck into a crowd of New Year’s revelers on Bourbon Street. Jabbar, a U.S. citizen and Army veteran who lived in Texas, was killed after a shootout with police. At least 14 people were killed and dozens more were wounded. The FBI has said the attack is being investigated as an act of terrorism.
The Jan. 1 Sugar Bowl game between Georgia and Notre Dame was delayed for one day due to security concerns, and will now begin at 3 p.m. CT Thursday. One issue that has drawn criticism was the decision by local officials to remove security bollards designed to block vehicular traffic to replace them for next month’s Super Bowl — despite similar risks being present with the New Year’s Eve and Sugar Bowl crowds.
“Bourbon street is about to reopen,” reported CNN News Central anchor Brianna Keilar Thursday, with senior national correspondent Ryan Young live at the corner of Bourbon and Canal Street.
Young said that New Orleans Police Department Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick was “still trying to process all of this” in the aftermath of the attack and went through some of the security upgrades, including a “surge of officers,” including “hundreds” of personnel from local and state agencies and the Department of Homeland Security.
According to Young, Kirkpatrick told him that “the plan is to have so many officers up and down Bourbon Street” so that “You will feel safe as you walk up and down it.”
He also noted that the NOPD was also thinking about their two officers who took gunfire and shot at the suspect as he was driving his vehicle down the street, with Kirkpatrick saying that those officers “absolutely” helped save lives by stopping Jabbar before he could drive down more than the three blocks he had already plowed his truck through.
Young then cued up a video clip of a “second line” — a type of traditional New Orleans memorial parade — with Kirkpatrick, the mayor, and local clergy members walking along the street, taking 14 yellow roses and placing them along the street to “show a lot of reverence to the victims here.”
The reporter then turned to the new security measures, including a new barrier that had been erected to completely block all vehicular traffic.
“So what we’re doing right now is we’re hardening the target,” said Kirkpatrick, so that “any penetration would be almost next to impossible.” This included bringing in “heavier equipment” and blocking off the sidewalks as well, since the New Year’s driver took his truck up on the sidewalk to get around a police car blocking the road.
Watch the clip above via CNN.
