The New Year’s Eve revelers attacked by an apparent Islamic extremist were vulnerable thanks to a city renovation project.
A system of security barriers known as bollards, had been removed from the tourist-intensive Bourbon Street so new ones could be installed in time for the city to host the Super Bowl in February, according to NBC News.
And that left an opening — in a city internationally famous for raucous, crowded celebrations — for an attack that left at least 14 innocent people dead.
The bollard system was originally installed in 2017 when the NBA All-Star game was played in New Orleans, NBC reported.
WVUE-TV in New Orleans described the original set-up as “four sets of barriers placed at either side of Bourbon Street intersections. The inner two columns can be pushed back when unlocked by a ground-level control panel, allowing for a roughly 13-foot (4-meter) berth for vehicles to navigate through.”
In the years since their installation, the barriers had been plagued by malfunctions — being clogged with Mardi Gras beads, for instance, according to NBC — and the city in November began a project to install a new system, according to the City of New Orleans website.
While that work was being done, the city relied on other barriers and strategically placed police vehicles to prevent potential threats.
But as the events early Wednesday morning showed, they weren’t enough.
“We did have a car there, we had barriers there, we had officers there, and they still got around,” Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick said at a news conference Wednesday, according to NBC.
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“We did indeed have a plan, but the terrorist defeated it.”
The “terrorist” was Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a 42-year-old native of Houston who, his brother told The New York Times, had converted to Islam years ago.
He was killed in a shootout with police after ramming a pickup truck into a crowd of pedestrians at the intersection of Bourbon and Canal streets, the heart of the city’s famed French Quarter.
According to NBC, one witness to the attack said he was surprised the barrier system was not in use for the New Year’s Eve celebration.
“They weren’t up, so you still kind of had to watch your back for cars,” he said.
As embarrassing as a situation might be for the city — to have a street security measure out of action for what is inarguably one of the biggest public event nights of the year in any city — New Orleans City Council President Helena Moreno downplayed its impact on the deadly events.
“This person was ready to inflict pain and death and harm on crowds in Bourbon Street, and I think he would have tried to find whatever way that he could,” she said, according to NBC.
But not everyone was so fatalistic.
Bollards were in the process of being replaced when a driver rammed a pickup truck through a New Orleans crowd.
“Cement bollards could have prevented the individual from gaining access to the sidewalk,” Rep. Troy Carter (D-LA) says. pic.twitter.com/CQ9mymnLFn
— ABC News Live (@ABCNewsLive) January 2, 2025
In an interview with ABC News, Rep. Troy Carter, a Democrat whose 2nd Congressional District includes most of New Orleans, said an extra vehicle to block the pavement at the point where the attack took place could have made it impossible.
“Listen, we can Monday-morning quarterback this, and we will, to make sure that we learn from these mistakes,” he said.
“We know that terrorists, they look, they study, they find the weakest point.
“We, as officials, have to consistently find ways to close every point, and that’s what you see right now.”
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