10 People Killed, 30 Injured After Truck Is Driven into New Year's Eve Crowd in New Orleans: Police

Mar. 15, 2025

Emergency services attend the scene after a vehicle drove into a crowd on New Orleans' Canal and Bourbon Street, Wednesday Jan. 1, 2025.Photo:MATTHEW HINTON/AFP via Getty

MATTHEW HINTON/AFP via Getty

Ten people are reported dead and multiple others injured after a truck drove into crowds of New Year’s revelers in New Orleans on Wednesday, Jan. 1.

In astatement, city authorities said that “The 8th District is currently working a mass casualty incident involving a vehicle that drove into a large crowd on Canal and Bourbon Street.”

“Public safety partners are responding on scene. Updates will follow as they are received.”

The New Orleans Police Department told PEOPLE that the incident happened after the truck driver drove his vehicle down Bourbon Street at a high rate of speed.

He was then killed after he exchanged gunshots with the police around 3:15 a.m. local time.

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CBS Newscited a New Orleans Police Department spokesperson as stating, “Initial reports show a car may have plowed into a group of people.” The outlet added that the incident happened as people were heading home from Bourbon Street in the lively French Quarter of the city.

CBS News reporter Kati Weis added that a truck deliberately drove into the crowd. The driver then got out of the truck and exchanged gunshots with the police.

The incident appeared to be intentional, police said, perABC News.

New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell called the incident “a terrorist attack” in a press conference held on Wednesday, Jan. 1.

Cantrell added that the investigation into the incident is ongoing.

Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, said in astatementon X (formerly Twitter), “A horrific act of violence took place on Bourbon Street earlier this morning. Please join Sharon [his wife] and I in praying for all the victims and first responders on scene. I urge all near the scene to avoid the area.”

A Bourbon Street sign in the French Quarter is displayed in New Orlean in October 2022.Aaron M. Sprecher via AP

Aaron M. Sprecher via AP

CBS News cited witnesses Jim and Nicole Mowrer, who visited New Orleans from Iowa for New Year’s Day, seeing a white truck bursting through a barricade “at a high rate of speed” on Bourbon Street before they heard “gunfire” after watching the New Year’s Day fireworks in the city.

“Once the gunfire stopped we … came out into the street, and came across a lot of — several people who had been hit, [we] wanted to see what we could do to help,” they said, per the outlet.

Witness Kevin Garcia, 22, toldCNN, “All I saw was a truck slamming into everyone on the left side of Bourbon sidewalk." He added that he heard gunshots and “a body came flying at me.”

Whit Davis from Shreveport, Louisiana, shared with the outlet that he was leaving a nightclub on Bourbon Street when saw the incident unfold. “Everyone started yelling and screaming and running to the back, and then we basically went into lockdown for a little bit and then it calmed down but they wouldn’t let us leave,” Davis, 22, said.

This is a breaking news story.

source: people.com