Terror Attacks in New Orleans and Las Vegas To Start The New Year

2025 Starts with a bang.

*Writer’s Note: This has been a very fluid situation, and most of the early information the media was broadcasting turned out to be false. I will do my best to get to the truth. If anything changes, I will update the post accordingly.*

Two separate, but possibly related, terror attacks happened today. First, at 3:15 am Central Time in New Orleans, a man drove an electric Ford F-150 into a crowd on Bourbon Street. Then, at 8:40 am Pacific Time, a Tesla Cybertruck exploded outside Trump Tower Vegas.

New Orleans

At 3:15 am Central Time, a man, later identified as Texas-born and raised retired Army IT Specialist and property manager from Houston, named Shamsud Din-Jabbar, drove a rented Ford F-150 Lightning (Ford’s EV F-150) into the crowd on Bourbon Street. He got about two blocks before he crashed into a lift. He then jumped out of the vehicle and engaged in a shoot-out with police, wounding 3 NOPD officers before he was killed. As of this writing, the death toll stands at 15, with at least 30 injured.

Police discovered an IED in the truck, and several more IEDs were found around the area. At one point, the FBI said they had reviewed footage showing what appeared to be at least 3 other men and a woman planting the bombs in the French Quarter. However, those individuals were cleared earlier this evening. They still are not sure that the attacker acted alone, but they no longer have any leads on potential accomplices.

The truck was rented through an app called Turo, which is like Airbnb for cars. The owner of the truck and his wife have said they are devastated that their vehicle was used in this matter, and they are fully cooperating with authorities.

The guns the attacker had were reported to be a Glock pistol and a .308 rifle that was reported stolen in New Jersey some time ago.

To complicate matters, an Airbnb believed to be used by the attacker caught fire around 5 am this morning in St. Roch, New Orleans. According to an interview with the next-door neighbor, there was minimal damage to the home, and police have asked for his Ring camera footage.

FoxNews initially reported that the suspect had entered the US from Mexico via Eagle Pass a few days prior; however, that information was later determined to be false. While someone who rented the truck did go through the border at Eagle Pass in November, the attacker in New Orleans was an American citizen, born and raised in Texas, and did not take the vehicle to Mexico before the attack.

There was also a lot of speculation about the bollards and barriers New Orleans has all along Bourbon Street. Because Bourbon Street is often packed with foot traffic and is the site of most of New Orleans’s famous street parties, the city has bollards that pop up and block off the road. Those bollards were not deployed last night - not because of some nefarious plot or city incompetence, but because the bollards were removed in November as part of a project to replace the old system with a newer system. The older system was constantly running into problems with Mardi Gras beads and other issues. Because of the upcoming Super Bowl in New Orleans, the city chose to use some of the funds to fix the aging, broken bollards. Police had barriers and cars set up to block off the road; however, a video shows the terrorist driving around the cop cars and jumping the sidewalk to get into Bourbon Street.

According to a report from CNN, the attacker made a series of videos while he was driving from Texas to New Orleans in which he detailed his plans. Initially, he wanted to off his ex-wives and daughters. However, he had several dreams about joining ISIS, so he changed his plans and joined up. An ISIS Flag was found attached to a pole on the back of the truck.

President Biden spoke to the Nation late Wednesday night. He said, "No one should jump to conclusions," so that's how we know for sure it was Islamic terrorism.

Las Vegas

Biden also spoke briefly about the Cybertruck explosion outside Trump Tower in Las Vegas this morning. According to Biden, authorities don’t have anything tying the two events together, but they are looking into the possibility that they are connected.

At 8:40 am Pacific Time, someone driving a Cybertruck pulled up to the valet area just outside the front doors of Trump Tower Vegas, and then the truck blew up. It would later be revealed that this vehicle was also rented via Turo; however, it comes from Colorado Springs, Colorado. As of this writing, the driver has not been identified.

Once the fire was out, it became clear that the driver had packed the bed of the truck with some gas cans, camping fuel, and a whole bunch of firework mortars. Officials believe that the whole mess in the truck bed was connected to a detonation device controlled by the driver. You can see the fireworks going off in the video of the explosion.

Miraculously, only the driver was killed. Seven other people who were standing nearby had only minor injuries, and even the glass doors of the building were not broken. It turns out that the Cybertruck contained the blast and protected everything around it, directing the force of the blast upwards instead of out.

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Lorraine Yuriar is a wife, mother, and lifelong conservative, currently stuck in a very blue state.