New Year Of Terror: What We Know About The Attacks So Far
What was supposed to be a day of celebration and hope has turned into a day of horror and mourning, for some just minutes after the clock struck midnight and rang in the new year. Three separate attacks on January 1st killed 15 and injured dozens of others. Two of the attacks, an ISIS-affiliated rampage in New Orleans and a Tesla Cybertruck car bomb in front of Trump Tower in Las Vegas, have reported common links between the terrorists. The third, a club shooting in Queens, New York, appears unrelated.
New Orleans
In the most deadly of the day’s attacks, a 42-year-old man, Shamsud Din-Jabbar, rammed a pickup truck at high speed into a crowd of people before opening fire on the crowd in the popular party district of Bourbon Street in downtown New Orleans. The truck was able to bypass temporary plastic barriers replacing the normal hydraulic steel barriers while the city was preparing for the upcoming Super Bowl. Din-Jabbar also reportedly had planted IEDs both in his car and in the area which failed to trigger, potentially saving dozens of lives.
Among the victims of the attack were multiple college-aged students, Kareem Badawi, a freshman attending the University of Alabama, Nikyra Cheyenne Dedeaux, a Gulfport, Mississippi, nursing student, and Hubert Gauthreaux, who graduated from a New Orleans-area high school in 2021.
Police responded to the attack and killed Din-Jabbar within seconds of the attack’s initiation. Din-Jabbar flew the flag of ISIS, an Islamic terrorist organization, on his truck, according to crime scene images. Before the attack, Din-Jabbar had previously worked as a real estate agent according to resurfaced videos on social media.
Las Vegas
The second attack of the day happened in front of Trump Tower in Las Vegas where a Cybertruck driver parked directly in front of the entrance to the building before detonating large amounts of firework-style mortars from inside the vehicle, killing himself and injuring at least 7 bystanders.
Elon Musk confirmed in a tweet that the Tesla Cybertruck had nothing to do with the explosion. The explosion reportedly was contained by the Cybertruck’s structure and did not even damage the front doors of the building.
Investigators are now looking at a possible link between the suspects after it was reported that Matthew Livelsberger, the 37-year-old Green Beret driver of the Cybertruck, and Din-Jabbar worked at the same military base and both rented the vehicles used in the terror attacks from Turo, a car-rental app.
Queens
The final attack of the day happened just before midnight, when a group of teens walked up to a line of people waiting to get into the Amazura nightclub in Queens, New York, and opened fire. Police say roughly 30 rounds were fired, hitting 10 people, of which all are expected to survive. The incident is being investigated as gang-related and reportedly was not deemed a terrorist attack.
Reaction
The attacks inflamed tensions on both sides, with many on the right fixating on Din-Jabbar’s apparent Islamic affiliation, while it’s important to note that the man was a U.S. Citizen and Texas native. Many on the left called for increased gun restrictions as a preventative measure, although it is unclear how many deaths such measures would have prevented, if any, as many in New Orleans were killed by Din-Jabbar’s truck, and no firearm-related deaths occurred in the other two attacks. The events mark a continuance of high-profile violence in America on the first day after a year that saw presidential candidate Donald Trump survive two assassination attempts as well as the committing of at least 488 mass shootings across the country.
