Mass murders weren’t nearly as common in 2024 as they may have been in some previous years. That’s very good news for some pretty obvious reasons.
Unfortunately, 2025 isn’t starting out well on that count.
Advertisement
It seems at least 10 people were killed and 30 others hospitalized after a vehicle plowed into a New Orleans crowd.
The New Year has begun with yet another “mass casualty incident,” and this time in the French Quarter in New Orleans, city officials said early Wednesday morning.
Ten people were killed and 30 were injured after a vehicle drove into a large crowd on Canal and Bourbon Street, according to the city’s official disaster preparedness agency, NOLA Ready.
Here’s what we know about the fatal incident:
The injured:
- The 30 people injured have been sent to various area hospitals, according to NOLA Ready.
- It seems most of those injured were local residents, not visitors, the leader of the New Orleans Police Department Anne Kirkpatrick said.
The suspect:
- The suspect in the New Orleans attack is dead, a federal law enforcement official told CNN.
- Investigators are certain that the person driving the vehicle through a crowd did not do so accidentally, Kirkpatrick said, adding police don’t think what happened was the result of impairment.
- The driver was traveling “at a very fast pace” and fired on New Orleans police officers, striking two who are in stable condition, Kirkpatrick said.
- The FBI and police are conducting searches of the vehicle as they seek to determine motive.
Advertisement
The FBI is investigating this as “an act of terrorism.” The mayor of New Orleans also called it a terrorist attack.
Honestly, there are a few early takeaways I have here and now.
The first is that I’m more surprised nothing like this hasn’t happened previously. Large gatherings are ideal targets for anyone looking to commit mass murder. New Year’s Eve is one of the biggest nights of the year for parties, which means masses of people all over the place. While Times Square in New York City is pretty well secured to try and prevent something like this, a lot of other places have never felt the need to do any such thing.
Second, I find it interesting that the attacker had a firearm but use his vehicle as a weapon.
Obviously, a vehicle can be used as an effective means of injuring or killing a lot of people. We’ve seen it happen all too often before to think otherwise. Yet we’ve seen guns used for a lot more such attacks on American soil.
This guy decided to use a vehicle over the firearm in his possession. That’s an interesting point that I fear won’t be explored adequately by either law enforcement or the media.
Advertisement
He could have committed a mass shooting and didn’t. Why?
Frankly, there are tons of additional questions I could ask, but there’s no point in delving too deeply into them right now because we still know relatively little. As we learn more, some of those questions might be answered. If not, at least then we’ll probably know enough to ask reasonable questions.
In the meantime, we all need to pray for those injured and killed in this senseless attack as well as for their families.
Clearly, what we need now is car control.
