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Ten Dead after Man Drives Truck into Crowd in New Orleans on New Year's Day and Then Opens Fire on Police; FBI Taking Over Investigation of Man Who Drove into Crowd in New Orleans. Aired 8- 8:30a ET

Aired January 01, 2025 - 08:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

DANNY FREEMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning. I'm Danny Freeman in New York. It is the first of the year, and we continue to follow breaking news out of New Orleans. Ten people are dead, at least 35 others injured after a car drove into a crowd in the French Quarter. We have some of the radio chatter right after this happened. I want you to take a listen to how it all sounded as it unfolded.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Communications to Engine 29 and all units heading towards Canal and Bourbon -- responding to a mass casualty incident. A vehicle ran into a crowd of people. There's multiple injuries, multiple casualties. They need you at Canal and Bourbon.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FREEMAN: So again, as you heard right there, emergency officials saying it happened overnight near Canal and Bourbon Street. The mayor of New Orleans calling this a terrorist attack, though the FBI then said it was not a terrorist incident. Police say the suspect drove around barricades to get to Bourbon Street. They said he was hell bent on creating carnage and even fired on police, shooting and injuring two officers.

We have a whole panel of folks who are here to digest and dissect what we have been covering over the course of this New Year's Day. You can see Andrew McCabe, Jean Casarez, Juliette Kayyem, and Ryan Young. But before we go to this panel, I want you to take a listen to the update that local officials just gave within the last hour.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAYOR LATOYA CANTRELL, NEW ORLEANS: First of all, we do know that the city of New Orleans was impacted by a terrorist attack. That's all still under investigation. You'll hear more after me. However, I have been in direct contact with the White House, with Governor Landry, and, of course, a unified command who is present here.

What I'm asking at this time are prayers for those who have lost their lives in the city of New Orleans due to this tragedy. In addition to that, I'm asking the public to stay clear of eight blocks around Bourbon Street, stay clear from Bourbon Street, eight blocks around. Very active, and again, a unified command is in place right now.

I'm going to ask Chief Kirkpatrick to give you an update. You're then going to hear from our agent in charge relative to the FBI. So at this time, Chief Kirkpatrick.

ANNE KIRKPATRICK, NEW ORLEANS SUPERINTENDENT OF POLICE: Thank you. All right, good morning, everyone. So I'm going to give you as much of the information I possibly can. We are going to give you an update a couple of times today. So we will give you just the basics this morning, all right.

We had this event started at about 3:15. It did involve a man driving a pickup truck down Bourbon Street at a very fast pace, and it was very intentional behavior. This man was trying to run over as many people as he possibly could. It was not a DUI situation. This is a more complex and more serious based on the information we have right now.

With respect to numbers, we have right now -- and as you already know, this could change throughout the day. We do know that there are 26 injured people who are at UMC hospital. We know we have four at Touro, four at Ochsner Baptist, one at Tulane. But even as I was walking out the door, I believe I have an unconfirmed additional people who have been taken to other area hospitals, possibly on the east side. But we will give you as many correct numbers as we can as the day progresses.

It is a very tragic situation for me to tell you that we know we have 10 people, that this man killed on Bourbon Street. That is why we do not want anyone on Bourbon Street today.

[08:05:03]

Wherever you see yellow tape, please do not violate this tape. This is in order to protect and stabilize the scene.

We have information to a certain degree of the demographics of those who are in the hospital right now. We do not know at this point how many could be tourists versus locals. But from the information I have right now, it seems the majority are locals versus tourists.

What I also can tell you is that this man, this perpetrator, he fired on our officers from his vehicle when he crashed his vehicle. Two of our officers have been shot. They are stable, and we will give you an update on them. I have yet been able to go to the hospital. I will be leaving here for us to go visit our officers. We have called in every officer that we have. We have so much appreciated our partnerships who have also offered us staff.

Last night we had over 300 officers out here. And because of the intentional mindset of this perpetrator, who went around our barricades in order to conduct this, he was hellbent on creating the carnage and the damage that he did. Because of the nature and the indices that we have on the scene, and we have enough information, that the FBI will be taking over this investigation.

And with that, I am going to be asking, this is the assistant agent in charge. This is Agent Duncan, Special Agent Duncan, and she has taken over this case on behalf of us and the FBI. As always, we will be in partnership with all of our partners, but Agent Duncan, if you want to have a few words.

ALETHEA DUNCAN, FBI ASSISTANT SPECIAL AGENT: Thank you, ma'am. Good morning. My name is Alethea Duncan. I'm the assistant special agent in charge for FBI New Orleans. As Chief Kirkpatrick said, we'll be taking over the investigative lead for this event. This is not a terrorist event. What it is right now is there are improvised explosive devices that was found, and we are working on confirming if this is a viable device or not.

As Chief Kirkpatrick said, were asking everyone to stay away from Bourbon Street, specifically from Canal Street to St. Ann. That is my ask. Once again, stay away from Bourbon Street, Canal Street all the way to St. Ann until we can figure out what is going on. Our goal is to provide you additional information at the 11:00 a.m. press conference. Thank you so much.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FREEMAN: All right, you heard right there the update from local officials in New Orleans about this evolving situation on the ground that happened earlier this morning in the French quarter, right on Bourbon Street. We have our panel back here to help break down what we just listened to. Jean, I'd like to go to you first, if that's all right. What were your major takeaways from what we heard from law enforcement right there?

JEAN CASAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, I think they've really shown the timeline in all of this, and I think we can recreate in our minds the vivid picture that they have described -- 3:15 in the morning, a man driving as fast as he can down Bourbon Street. He goes beyond the barricades to hit as many people as he can. While he's doing that, it appears as though that's when he takes out a gun and shoots two police officers.

And then after that, that's when everything basically is done. But the improvised explosive devices that they have found, they have found them, but they probably, as we speak, are looking to see if they were viable.

But here's the one question that was not answered. What about this perpetrator? Do they have him in custody? Is he deceased? He shot two police officers. They had a right to shoot back. We don't know what happened there. So that is where we're sort of wondering, because they're going to want to question him. They're going to want to see exactly what that mindset was from him, if possible.

FREEMAN: Jean, I appreciate you mentioning that because that was something we discussed last hour that, again, we don't have information about this suspect at the heart of this just yet. Jean, I'll let you go to work your sources. Thank you for your reporting all this morning.

Andrew, I want to go to you. A number of different things from that press conference, as Jean noted -- shooting at officers, potentially explosive devices found, and now we know the FBI is taking control of this investigation.

[08:10:08]

I guess, Andrew, can you just explain to me why is the FBI now coming in and taking the lead here?

ANDREW MCCABE, CNN SENIOR LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Sure. Well, I think we also have to put on that list of things that we got from the press conference. A little bit of confusion in messaging from our local officials, which is not -- that that often happens. They are trying to get their hands around this thing as quickly as they can. But the mayor very clearly said at the beginning of the press conference that this had been a terrorist attack. The police chief, although I don't believe she used the word "terrorist," she referred to it repeatedly as an intentional act, that he drove around the barricades. And then, of course, the FBI assistant special agent in charge said, started off her comments by saying this is not a terrorist event. And then she really only referred to the to the IDEs that they were investigating.

So a lot going on there. And it's not I think, strange to see that they're not maybe perfectly connected on how they're going to message this and present it to the public at this early hour.

Nevertheless, the FBI investigates many things for the purpose of determining whether or not they are terrorist acts. So the fact that the FBI is involved doesn't mean conclusively they've determined, yes, this is terrorism. They could still be in the phase of trying to make that determination for themselves. Terrorist investigation is a national security investigation, and it is done for the purpose of mitigating a potential threat to national security. You don't wait until the terrorism label has been applied before you get out the agents and the resources and the teams to do this work. So I think it's entirely predictable and responsible that the FBI is now at the front of this very large law enforcement team, and that's to make that determination about potential national security threats.

They want to know if this was an intentional attack, why did it happen? And most importantly, do they need to be concerned about another one? Are there other people out there who might have helped this attacker, trained this person, supported them with resources or money or instruments that they needed for this attack? And are there potentially other attackers out there they need to be prepared for?

So it also brings the entirety of the FBI's intelligence collection apparatus to the table. And that's going to really inform the direction that the investigators go and enables them to bring in, bring other partners to that effort as well.

FREEMAN: And I should note, the local law enforcement folks there who were speaking said that there will be another press conference at 11:00 a.m. local time where hopefully we can have the opportunity to hear more about that conflicting messaging, the potential devices, and again, crucially, as Jean noted earlier, the suspect as well.

Juliette Kayyem, I want to bring you into this conversation. You heard this press conference. You heard the local officials saying very clearly and unequivocally that this was a very intentional act, that this man was trying to run people over, and that this was not a DUI. I just want to get your top line reaction to what's been unfolding so far in New Orleans.

JULIETTE KAYYEM, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Yes. So it's intentional, or, as the governor said, it was clearly an act of violence. And this question of terror or terrorism, I want to just pick up on what Andy said. Look, this is an act of terror in the sense that it is terrorizing a city. Ten people are dead. The city is closed down. And the mayor may have been using that term, or the term "terror" as a reflection and a description of what this kind of violence does to a city, regardless of the perpetrators intent.

The FBI uses a much more formalistic view of it, as well as law enforcement, which is you have to prove a certain kind of intent related to political violence generally to prove terrorism. So I think that the explanation will be just sort of how are you thinking about this word? Are you trying to bring a case or are you reflecting on what's just happened to a city, which is someone used a pickup truck and guns to essentially create terror in an American city a few hours into the new year?

We will get clarity on that. Part of it is we can't get clarity until we know who the perpetrator is. As we've been saying, who is he? Is he in custody? Is he alive or dead? Did they know him before? Did the FBI know him before? The IEDs, as Andy was saying, is just a factor that shows both intent, sort of preplanning. He didn't just sort of -- something didn't happen that night and he and he decides to ram in. I mean, he clearly had some preplanning to this if there are viable IEDs. But IEDs also can be used loosely.

[08:15:00]

So, we'll wait on that.

I'm looking at a couple other things, you know, 3:00 AM is not 12:00 AM. I know that sounds weird, but for those of us who are on call with you last night with CNN, you know, you sort of start to let loose a little bit at 12:00, 12:15, 12:30 as it looks like things are safe.

So 3:00 AM it's less dense, but we also wonder what was the police presence like? What were the barricades like at that time? And was there any drawdown over the course of those hours that may have made this attack a little bit easier for the perpetrator? These things will all be answered but in particular, obviously, who is this person?

FREEMAN: I want to bring into the conversation, also, CNN's Ryan Young from Atlanta.

Ryan, a couple of things that just put into context what's going on in New Orleans today as we're looking at now, footage of the scene in the daylight hours.

The Sugar Bowl is happening today, of course, you know, an enormous college football bowl --

RYAN YOUNG, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely.

FREEMAN: -- typical after on New Year's Day.

The reason that's important is not only are there tremendous amount of people in New Orleans, even more so than they would normally before New Year's Eve on Bourbon Street, but there was a tremendous law enforcement presence and continues to be already. What did you hear on that particular subject from the press conference?

YOUNG: Well, let's take that in a couple layers here. Not only do you have the Sugar Bowl, but you also have the Super Bowl that's coming up in less than a month pretty much that's going to happen in that same city.

When you talk about the layers of security, as someone who's covered the Sugar Bowl before, they really do a good job of sort of blocking off Bourbon Street as someone who's been there at midnight.

But the idea, and something that Julia brought up there is did they move some barricades beforehand? We saw in New York, we've seen in cities like Atlanta and Chicago, they use the heavy sanitation trash trucks to sort of block off roads. And that's something that we haven't seen in this location.

One thing we do know, and one of the reasons why they might be able to talk about that motivation and how that truck was moving through the crowd, is there are a lot of video cameras that are up and down Bourbon Street.

So, officers probably had the opportunity to watch back the incident almost in real time to see exactly what happened. And that would lead me to the next question is, do they have a beat on the suspect? Because obviously, if you have a white F-150 that fired shots, the tracking cameras that are in that area should be able to flag that and be able to follow a license plate.

So I'm hoping to hear from law enforcement in the near future about how they were able to track that vehicle, whether the suspect is still in it, or did he flee.

You would also believe that if two officers were fired on, did they return fire at some point?

But when you look at those numbers and you see the fact that they used that clear language that he was trying to intentionally hit people who were in that area, you know, just how dangerous that would be with a truck of that size. But one of the things that stood out to me, is all I saw was those metal barricades in that area.

The drawdown aspect of it, we know that usually they surge people in around that midnight area. New Orleans does a really good job of having a mounted patrol as well. So you just have to wonder what was the number of officers that were down there at the time of this at 3:00?

And then moving from that point, how many video surveillance cameras are in the area from local hotels, from local businesses? Did anybody who was involved in this who was on the street, also get video that could help investigators? Those are all the big questions. And of course, hopefully we'll get more of that when it comes to around 11:00.

FREEMAN: Yes, and again, you know, one of the interesting things is that we heard from eyewitnesses, Ryan, right at the or I should say, maybe a couple of hours after this incident happened and they had said we heard gunshots.

And initially the question was, was there a gun firing component of this incident? And then sure enough, as you heard from the law enforcement officials there, there absolutely was as the suspect, according to these officials, shot two police officers.

I want to bring into the conversation CNN's Tom Foreman, who, as I understand you have a long history and relationship with New Orleans.

And, Tom, can you -- I've been to Bourbon Street. I've been to New Orleans. I imagine a lot of our viewers potentially have. But for those who haven't, you know, we're looking at these images. These are tiny areas here and the thought of a pickup truck plowing through Bourbon Street is pretty terrifying.

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Bourbon Street on New Year's Eve or at Mardi Gras or during the Super Bowl or any of the other events, the Sugar Bowl, as in tonight around midnight, very likely would have been packed end to end, like a rock concert. That's the only way I can describe it.

I mean, a lot of us who are locals down there, you know, at certain times of year, certain days, you would really not particularly want to be on Bourbon Street, not because it wasn't fascinating, but because it was so crowded sometimes.

[08:20:12]

Now, the police in New Orleans arguably do some of the best crowd control in this country because they deal with such massive crowds. This area right here between Canal Street, this giant wide avenue coming right down the middle of New Orleans, where it turns there onto Bourbon Street, that really is a nexus that matters a great deal. They had a parade there yesterday afternoon for the Sugar Bowl in this area. And so, when you turn there onto Bourbon Street, that's where the crowd first starts to pick up.

If this truck had been, two or three blocks further down Bourbon Street, away from Canal, working its way into the town, the crowds would have likely been even larger.

Over the years, there has been a real effort to stop vehicular access to that whole area. Bourbon Street is typically closed, except for some service vehicles, just virtually all the time. I mean, it's opened some, but for that purpose, mainly it's closed and the cross streets to it are typically closed.

And when big events are happening, you will see the barricading of the streets not only by permanent, you know, well, movable, but barricades that are in place to stop traffic going down there, but also big dump trucks and things put there to stop people from coming in.

So, it's interesting that the mayor talked about the notion of this person somehow going around those barricades to get onto Bourbon Street and work their way down. This has been one of the reasons she mentioned that this wasn't a drunk driving incident was back in 2017, a drunk driver plowed into people during the Endymion Parade, one of the biggest parades of carnival and a couple dozen people were hurt.

Nobody was killed at the time, but back then there was a great concern among all of us who know the town. There is obviously a concern for the people hurt, but for the notion that was this a terrorist attack, was this or a purposeful attack?

Let's not use the word terrorist. I guess, since we have some confusion over whether that's what this constituted. But there is a question back then of whether it was a purposeful attack. Turned out it was more of a case of an intoxicated driver. But that's why the mayor was talking about this. And that is one of the reasons that this city has been aware of this kind of threat and has taken a lot of measures to prevent this kind of threat.

It's going to be very interesting when we find out exactly where this car came from to start this attack, if it was in fact going down Bourbon Street, I would think it probably came from Canal, because Canal is kept open as much as possible, because it is this main thoroughfare cutting right through the middle of the city, through hotels, restaurants, all sorts of things.

But this at the start of Bourbon Street here, I think when we get more details of exactly where this truck came from, exactly where it was going, and ultimately what did stop it, I don't know if it was the car crashing or did it hit some other barricades further down, because there are plenty of things to try to stop this from happening.

Obviously, it didn't work in this case, but as Andrew McCabe noted earlier on, you know, when you have somebody very, very determined to bring damage like this, they can do it.

And this is a big target -- Sugar Bowl every year. Huge event here and loads of people down on Bourbon Street, of course, but out into Canal. And this is what, maybe eight blocks from the Superdome there you see the dome right there. You kind of wind in and out there and, and everything over where you see the word Bourbon Street, everything to the right of that. In this case, because of the curve of the river, it makes it shape this way.

It would be to the right and to the upper right hand corner of your screen. That's the French Quarter over there on that side of Canal Street. That's where you draw massive crowds of tourists. And when the mayor said, seemed like a lot of locals there, well, that's because this is a huge service industry town.

Tourism is unbelievably massive here. So, you have many, many, many locals who are in that area, many of them to work and then some of them to simply be around the festivities as well.

But the French Quarter, it's important to remember, is a living, breathing community that is heavily based in tourism. But people live here. People have their homes in the French Quarter. This is an attack not just on a tourist area, but on a neighborhood.

So, that's a little measure of how this feels, especially to a New Orleanian, those of us who have called New Orleans home and still consider it home, this is an attack on really the heart and soul of New Orleans itself.

The community has been there for hundreds of years, the French Quarter surviving many things and police have tried to be prepared for just this. And again, as I said from the beginning, one of the best police forces in this country for knowing how to control crowds.

[08:25:18]

FREEMAN: And just to all of those very important points, Tom, so eerie to see Bourbon Street so empty this morning, of course, now closed off after this attack.

We're going to take a quick break, but just before we go, we do now know that President Joe Biden has been briefed on the situation. The White House putting a statement out, saying that he's been briefed on the horrific news that a driver killed and injured dozens of individuals in New Orleans overnight. And the White House has been in touch with the New Orleans mayor to offer support.

The FBI is already on the ground supporting local law enforcement in the investigation, and the president will continue to be briefed throughout the day. We're going to take a quick break and then update you more on this developing story.

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[08:29:57]

FREEMAN: We continue to follow this breaking, tragic story of ten killed and dozens of others injured after a vehicle, a pickup truck, plowed through crowds on Bourbon Street in the heart of New Orleans.

You're looking at photos right here from the French Quarter. It's been a challenging morning for this community. Local law enforcement telling us last hour that a man was driving a pickup truck exhibiting very intentional behavior.

[08:30:25]