The deadly attack in New Orleans happened as crowds in the city were ballooning in anticipation of Wednesday’s Sugar Bowl college football playoff game.
PASADENA, Calif. — Just hours before the start of the Rose Bowl parade in California, organizers held a moment of silence in memory of the victims killed in the New Year’s Day attack in New Orleans.
Los Angeles TV station KCAL said its crew was getting ready when it heard the announcement at the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Association site, known locally as Tournament House, about a moment of silence following this morning’s tragic events on Bourbon Street.
“We stand in solidarity with the entire state [of Louisiana] at this difficult time. Let’s take a few moments of silence please,” an unidentified individual speaking to a crowd at the Tournament House said.
The Rose Parade began at 11 a.m. Eastern with the official broadcast sending condolences and prayers to the people of New Orleans and Louisiana. The parade is followed by the No. 1 ranked and top-seeded Oregon Ducks facing the eighth-seeded Ohio State Buckeyes in a College Football Playoff quarterfinal at the Rose Bowl.
Crowds in New Orleans were ballooning in anticipation of Wednesday night’s Sugar Bowl college football playoff game between Georgia and Notre Dame at the nearby Superdome. The stadium was on lockdown Wednesday morning, but the game was expected to go on as scheduled.
Authorities say 10 people were killed and 35 others were injured when a driver rammed a vehicle into a crowd of pedestrians early on New Year’s Day, in what the FBI is investigating as an act of terrorism.
The attack is the latest example of a vehicle being used as a weapon to carry out mass violence, a trend that has alarmed law enforcement officials and that can be difficult to protect against.
A 50-year-old Saudi doctor plowed into a Christmas market teeming with holiday shoppers in the German city of Magdeburg last month, killing four women and a 9-year-old boy. A man who drove his SUV through a Christmas parade in suburban Milwaukee in 2021 is serving a life sentence after a judge rejected arguments from him and his family that mental illness drove him to do it. Six people were killed.
An Islamic extremist was sentenced last year to 10 life sentences for killing eight people with a truck on a bike path in Manhattan on Halloween in 2017. Also in 2017, a self-proclaimed admirer of Adolf Hitler slammed his car into counterprotesters at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia and is now serving a life sentence.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.