Mass casualty event in New Orleans casts a sad New Year's Day shadow

NEW ORLEANS – You open the window blinds of your hotel room at 5:45 a.m. to greet a new day and a new year and a Notre Dame football game day and suddenly, none of it seems all that important.

Forget football.

Instead of the dawn of a new day in this city, all you see scattered across four city blocks are flashing blue lights. Police cars. They’re everywhere. In both lanes of Canal Street and even up the middle, usually reserved for the streetcars that run around town. Off to one side are the flashing red lights of a pair of ambulances.

On a day of football, of new beginnings, of hope, there is only tragedy. Sad. Senseless. People lost their lives down there. Others who were down there last night woke up this morning in area hospitals, many possibly fighting to see the rest of 2025 and beyond.

This hurts.

Details at dawn Wednesday were still murky. Early reports indicated a mass casualty event occurred outside that hotel room window. Around 3:15 a.m., a man driving a pickup truck plowed down Bourbon Street, which runs one way off Canal Street, one of the busiest thoroughfares in this city.

Ten people were killed. As many as 35 were injured and sent to four area hospitals. One news report said that the man who drove the pickup truck exited his vehicle and then fired at law enforcement. Two New Orleans police officers were shot. The pickup driver was shot and killed.

Reports that hotels near the area were evacuated. City officials have urged everyone to stay away from the area. The crime scene entails eight blocks on and around Bourbon Street. The most famous street in this city, now a crime scene.

You heard all the sirens at some overnight hour from your hotel room but thought nothing of it. Sirens in a big city, especially on New Year’s Eve/Day? That’s common. You heard them most of the week down here. Morning. Noon. Night. That’s life in a big city.

What happened Wednesday morning, hours before the Allstate Sugar Bowl/College Football Playoff game between Notre Dame (12-1) and Georgia (11-2), a game still scheduled to be played, is not.

The sight of all those squad cars, all those blue lights flashing quietly in the pre-dawn hours, leaves you shaken. How might Notre Dame’s offensive line handle Georgia’s defense? Will quarterback Riley Leonard make as many plays with his right arm as with his feet?

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None of that matters. You think not of what you might see later that night at the Caesars Superdome, which sits one mile from the corner of Canal and Bourbon, but of the victims, their loved ones. Were they Notre Dame fans? Georgia fans? Locals?

Hours earlier, you walked Bourbon Street, just then only waking after another night of, well, being Bourbon Street. Vendors making deliveries. Shop owners opening their doors for another day. And night. Fans in the red and black of Georgia and the blue and gold of Notre Dame mingling on both sides of the one-way street. Others wearing beads that are so associated with this city’s Mardi Gras celebration.

Notre Dame’s team hotel is not near the crime scene.

On New Year’s Eve night, you watched from your hotel room as five, six, seven buses carrying the Georgia football traveling party, whose hotel is steps away from what would become a crime scene, up Canal Street en route to dinner.

Hours later, only those blue and red lights flashing quietly in the coming sunrise. Then, more sirens. Coming. Going.

A new day. A new year. None of it is worth celebrating just yet. For now, only a stunned sadness.

Follow South Bend Tribune and NDInsider columnist Tom Noie on X (formerly Twitter): @tnoieNDI. Contact Noie at tnoie@sbtinfo.com

This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: Notre Dame football game against Georgia is still scheduled to be played

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