New Orleans Eyewitness Recalls Seeing People ‘Dead Right in Front of Us’ After ‘Unbelievable’ Attack

One New Orleans man is sharing his eyewitness account of the horrific scene that took place on Bourbon Street early in the morning on New Year’s Day.

After the driver of a pickup truck drove down Bourbon Street, killing 10 and injuring around 35 people in the city’s popular French Quarter, the driver was killed in a subsequent shooting exchange with police.

Jimmy Cothran, a New Orleans resident who was in a nearby nightclub at the time of the incident, spoke with NBC News about the horrors he and others witnessed. Sharing that he and friends noticed “a lot of commotion” at the end of Bourbon Street, Cothran said he ducked into the nightclub going up onto a balcony to see what had happened.

“We got to the balcony and it was not what we expected,” Cothran said. “Dead right in front of us was someone’s mother, twisted, obviously deceased. We counted eight just from a couple of seconds of standing there, eight bodies.”

Related: FBI Confirms New Orleans Driver That Killed 10 Is Dead, Will Treat Case as Act of Terrorism

Describing several of the victims on the ground as being “graphically deceased,” Cothran said he saw a man with tire tracks across his back and stomach “clearly crushed.”

“The mother that was in front of us, she was horribly disfigured,” he continued. “A little girl that we had seen dancing as we were walking up the street, she was just as a flat as a pillow. It just kept going.”

Calling the scene “unbelievable,” Cothran said, “We were held prisoner with those sights and carnage and memory inside that club for over an hour and a half with no one telling us anything.”

He also highlighted the fact that the sturdy barricades typically up on Bourbon Street were not in place at the time of the crash.

“When we got there, me and my friend were surprised they hadn’t put this up because usually you can walk safely in the middle of Bourbon once you hit Bourbon,” he said. “There were no barricades on Bourbon up. They had the flimsy triangle-style orange and white barricades, that’s what they had.”

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Related: 2 Officers Shot During New Orleans New Year’s Event Now in ‘Stable’ Condition, Police Chief Says

The incident on Bourbon Street took place at 3:15 a.m. local time on Jan. 1, according to police. The FBI has confirmed that the suspect is dead and that it is investigating the incident as a “potential act of terrorism.”

New Orleans Police Department Superintendent Chief Anne Kirkpatrick previously told reporters of the incident, “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 more complex and serious based on the information we have.”

Kirkpatrick called out the driver’s “intentional mindset,” saying, “This perpetrator, who went around our barricades in order to conduct this, he was hell-bent on creating the carnage and the damage he did.”

Police have not released the identity of the deceased suspect. Police are set to have another press conference for further updates at 11 a.m. local time.

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