New Orleans police promise ‘hundreds of officers’ will line city streets surrounding Sugar Bowl after attack
New Orleans Police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick is promising ‘hundreds of officers’ will be lining the city streets prior to Thursday’s rescheduled Sugar Bowl in the latest security effort following Wednesday’s terrorist attack in the French Quarter.
‘We are staffing up at the same level, if not more so, than what we were preparing for the Super Bowl,’ Kirkpatrick told NBC Today.
The College Football Playoff quarterfinal at the Sugar Bowl between Georgia and Notre Dame was postponed a day because of an attack about a mile away from the Superdome early Wednesday, when authorities say a truck driver deliberately plowed into a New Year’s crowd and killed 15 people.
The game, originally scheduled for 7:45pm CST at the 70,000-seat Superdome on Wednesday, was pushed back to 3pm Thursday. The winner advances to the January 9 Orange Bowl against Penn State.
New Orleans City Council President Helena Moreno told WDSU-TV earlier Wednesday, before the postponement was announced, that the security perimeter around the Superdome was being ‘extended to be a larger zone.’
‘There are more police officers who are coming in,’ she said.
Police vehicles are seen outside the Louisiana Superdome following Wednesday’s attack
The casualties in New Orleans occurred when Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a 42-year-old US citizen born and raised in Texas, rammed a pickup truck into a crowd of revelers in New Orleans’ famed French Quarter early on New Year’s Day. In addition to those killed, more than 30 people were injured.
The driver was killed in a firefight with police following the attack at about 3:15am along Bourbon Street near Canal Street, the FBI said.
Seven victims have now been identified among the 15 innocent people who were killed in the horrific New Orleans terror attack.
A former college football star, high school senior, father-of-two and young mother are some of the 15 victims who tragically died when Jabbar deliberately drove into pedestrians with an ISIS flag attached to his car.
Tiger Bech, 28, Ni’kyra Cheyenne Dedeaux, 18, Reggie Hunter, 37, Nicole Perez, 27, Matthew Tenedorio, Kareem Badawi, and Hubert Gauthreaux, 21, lost their lives in the senseless attack in the early hours of News Year’s Day in the French Quarter.
‘Public safety is paramount,’ Sugar Bowl CEO Jeff Hundley said at a media briefing alongside federal, state and local officials, including Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry and New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell. ‘All parties all agree that it’s in the best interest of everybody and public safety that we postpone the game.’
The decision to postpone the game meant numerous traveling fans with tickets would not be able to attend. Ticket prices online plummeted in some cases to less than $25 as fans with plans to depart on Thursday tried to unload them.
‘We can’t get new flights,’ said Lisa Borrelli, a 34-year-old Philadelphia resident who came to New Orleans with her fiancé, a 2011 Notre Dame graduate.
Postponing the game ‘was absolutely the right call,’ she said. ‘I completely understand.’
She said they paid more than $250 per ticket and hadn’t bothered listing them for resale yet because prices were so low.
‘Of course we’re disappointed to miss it and to lose so much money on it, but at the end of the day it doesn’t matter,’ Borrelli said. ‘We’re fortunate enough that we’ll be fine.’
U.S. Rep. Troy Carter, D-La., said the decision to postpone the game ‘was not done lightly.’
‘It was done with one single thing in mind: public safety — making sure that the citizens and visitors of this great city, not only for this event, but for every event you come to in Louisiana, that you will be safe,’ Carter added.
Landry said he had a message for those thinking, ‘Man, do I really want to go to the Sugar Bowl tomorrow?’
‘I tell you one thing: Your governor’s going to be there,’ Landry said. ‘That is proof, believe you me, that that facility and this city is safer today than it was yesterday.’
FBI agents look at the site where people were killed by a man driving a truck in a terrorist attack
Reggie Hunter, 37, (left). Nicole Perez, 27, (right)
Hubert Gauthreaux’s family had been frantically sharing posts to social media that he was missing in the aftermath of the attack, before revealing he was found dead at a hospital
Tiger Bech, 28, of Lafayette, Louisiana, died in the New Orleans terror attack Wednesday. He had previously played football at Princeton University (right)
Ni’kyra Cheyenne Dedeaux, 18, also lost her life in the attack
Darrell Huckaby, 72, of Athens, Georgia, also decided to return home Thursday instead of staying for the game. He was in a hotel room overlooking the corner where the attack took place. He was asleep when it occurred, but when he woke up, he could see pink blankets covering the bodies of the dead, and later saw them being placed in bags and loaded onto trucks bound for the Orleans Parish Coroner’s office.
‘It was heartbreaking,’ he said. ‘I think the first instinct of most people this morning was wanting to be home. As important as football is to our Georgia culture, for a little while, the game just didn’t really seem to matter.
‘And I think there was a lot of uncertainty, and I understand,’ Huckaby said. ‘It took them a long time to decide on the game time and people kind of had to make decisions without all the information.’
He added that he would ‘probably eat’ the $360 per ticket he paid.
Hundley said work was underway to ‘set up a safe and efficient and fun environment’ at and around the Superdome on Thursday.
The Superdome was on lockdown for security sweeps on Wednesday morning.
Both teams spent most of the day in their hotels, holding meetings in ballrooms.
Georgia’s players bused to the Superdome for a walk-through practice on Wednesday evening. As they made their way to buses on Canal Street, fans in red and black stood eight to 10 deep behind barricades, cheering them on, phones held high above their heads to capture the scene.
Around that time, at a hotel on the banks of the Mississippi River, Notre Dame players gathered with family members in a ballroom where the Rose Bowl quarterfinal between Ohio State and Oregon was being shown on television.
Notre Dame offered band members the option of flying home on Thursday instead of attending the game, and some chose to do so.
Georgia president Jere Morehead said the university confirmed that a student was among those critically injured. Morehead said the university was in contact with the student’s family.
Statements from the University of Georgia Athletic Association and from Notre Dame said both schools had accounted for all team personnel and members of official travel parties.
The Superdome, which is about 20 blocks away, also is scheduled to host the Super Bowl on February 9.
The first Super Bowl after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, also was held in New Orleans, and there was a massive security perimeter for that game including street closures surrounding the Superdome and officers — including snipers — on the tops of surrounding high-rise buildings, as well as on the roof of the dome itself.
‘We are deeply saddened by the news of the devastating incident in New Orleans,’ the NFL said in a statement.
‘The NFL and the local host committee have been working collaboratively with local, state and federal agencies the past two years and have developed comprehensive security plans,’ the statement continued. ‘We are confident attendees will have a safe and enjoyable Super Bowl experience.’
