At the cross-street of Bourbon and Saint Phillip, a few dozen yards from the police security line around the crime scene on Thursday morning, it was almost as if nothing had happened.
Tourists meandered past the ornate old creole cottages, the bars served cold beer on tap, and horse-drawn carts traipsed through the western end of the French Quarter, in a familiar scene.
Barely a day had passed since an act of carnage claimed 14 lives, injured more than 35 and also led to the death of the suspect about eight blocks up the street. But already the area has lurched back into functionality.
Behind the facade, though, grief and melancholy has gripped the city and was especially acute among the locals who live and work in this famed neighborhood in the city’s historic centre.
At a post office on the street corner, Donyale Roberson served a small stream of customers sending their first packages of the year, and took a moment to reflect.
“It’s devastating,” she said. “Because I don’t want to see the city cast in this light. It deserves better than that. There is so much beauty here, and when that gets taken away and you’re put in a different light … it is maddening.”
New Orleans so often reaches the pages of the national and international press in moments of crisis and disaster – from environmental catastrophe to spates of violent crime – that depictions of the city’s resilience are fast becoming almost a trope.
And yet, resolve is something many here are quick to discuss in the aftermath of the attack just after 3am on New Year’s Day, as hundreds were out in the streets still dancing, reveling and ringing in 2025 before tragedy struck.
“Our mettle is constantly being tested,” Roberson, 54, said. “But as a local, it’s not going to change anything about how I live my life.”
Further into the Quarter, on Royal Street, which sits adjacent to Bourbon, Harley Field was serving coffee and cake to a small line of sheriff’s deputies weary from a shift on the police lines.
“It hurts us even more because this guy isn’t even from our city,” the 29-year-old said. “He’s from Texas. Why did he have to come here, to this community that is so closely stitched together, and do this to us?”
While law enforcement officials had told reporters on Wednesday they believed the suspected driver and gunman, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, might have acted with others, they changed their assessment on Thursday, concluding that he had acted alone. Jabbar, 42, was shot dead as he exchanged fire with officers. He was inspired by the extremist ideology of Islamic State, the FBI said.
Videos made by the gunman, and reported by CNN, suggest he might have contemplated violence against his own family before changing his plans to target New Orleans instead.
It did not take long for political posturing to overshadow some of the grief felt throughout the city. Donald Trump attempted to blame the attack on the immigration policy of the Democratic president he is succeeding later this month, Joe Biden, while falsely suggesting Jabbar, who is a US citizen, was an immigrant.
Locally, too, Republican leaders in Louisiana have sought to cast a portion of blame on the city’s Democratic leaders, most vocally its embattled mayor, LaToya Cantrell. Some have pointed out that a metal bollard system in the French Quarter, designed to stop cars driving down the narrow, crowded streets during celebrations, was in the process of being replaced when the attack occurred, meaning it was not operational.
“We dance around the issue,” Louisiana’s Republican lieutenant governor, Billy Nungesser, told local media. “This mayor has been non-existent in getting things done that needed to get done.”
The noise, however, did not seem to cut through to many residents working in close proximity to the attack.
“There’s been a lot of talk saying, ‘They could have done this, they could have done that,’” said Gil Rubman, a 70-year-old jeweler working on Royal Street. “But the bottom line is there were 300 police in that area. And when something like this happens so spontaneously, there’s nothing anybody can do to prevent it from happening.”
Away from politics, the names of those killed continued to emerge.
Matthew Tenedorio, a 25-year-old audiovisual technician at the city’s Superdome sports arena. Nikyra Dedeaux, an 18-year-old aspiring nurse from Mississippi. Reggie Hunter, a 37-year-old father of two from Louisiana’s state capital, Baton Rouge, and others from a wide spectrum of society, some from the city, some from elsewhere.
By Thursday afternoon, officials confirmed they planned to reopen the blocks of Bourbon Street where the attack had happened.
Street cleaners could be seen clearing detritus and hosing down the streets. Local officials held a small blessing ceremony at the intersection where the rampage had begun.
