Jeanne Le Borgne
01/03/2025 at 3:00 p.m.
On the night of December 31 to January 1, 2025, a man who had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State mowed down around fifty people on Bourbon Street, in the heart of the French Quarter of New Orleans, injuring 35 people and killing 15 others. . A survivor described a “surreal” scene.
A moving testimony. On the night of December 31 to January 1, 2025, Jeremi Sensky returned to his hotel in New Orleans after spending New Year's Eve with friends. But while on Bourbon Street in the heart of the French Quarter, the man who uses a wheelchair due to lower-body paralysis heard a “huge noise.” The last thing he remembers is falling face down on the ground and seeing his wheelchair crushed a few feet away, as he told NBC News.
Jeremi Sensky is one of the 35 survivors of the car attack that left 15 dead that evening, and he explained to our colleagues that he thought he had been “hit” by Shamsud’s pickup. Din Jabbar, a former soldier converted to the Islamic State (El). “Everything happened very quickly,” he assures, indicating that he simply had time to hear “screams and gunshots” before falling. Once on the ground, the man called for help, but “no one wanted to come,” he laments. “I rolled over and saw people taking photos from the balcony. I screamed for help, but people only looked at me. »
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“Lucky to be alive”
A police officer named Patrick finally came and explained to Jeremi Sensky that many people had died and that he was “lucky to be alive.” Not realizing that the man was disabled, the officer did not offer help to the victim, who waited a long time before being rescued. “That’s when I realized it was a horrible scene,” he recalls. Transported to hospital with a leg broken into “a million pieces”, he was operated on successfully, but now struggles to understand what happened, describing the attack as “surreal”. “I love everyone. Everyone,” he insisted to our colleagues. “I can't believe this could happen. »
