As new details continue coming to light about the New Year's Day attack that killed at least 15 people and injured 30 others in New Orleans' French Quarter district, safety concerns are moving to the forefront of people's minds, including here in Massachusetts.
Federal investigators have identified the suspect who was killed in a shootout with police as Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a 42-year-old U.S. Army veteran from Texas.
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Authorities are working to determine the motivation behind the attack and whether or not Jabbar acted alone. He had a black ISIS flag affixed to the hitch of the rented pickup truck that he allegedly intentionally drove into a crowd around 3:15 a.m. Wednesday on Bourbon Street as people were ringing in the new year.
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Massachusetts State Police have said there's no known threat or connection to the Bay State, but law enforcement in the region is on high alert and has urged members of the public to remain vigilant and report anything suspicious or out of the ordinary to 911.
As authorities continue to investigate this as a terrorist attack, a local expert in terrorism and UMass political professor says the Islamic State has been focused on these types of attacks.
"Their best way of keeping their name in the headlines is to encourage self-radicalized individuals to carry out do-it-yourself, low-tech attacks," Joseph Brown said.
"This person's the typical suspect, disaffected, going through a personal crisis, mostly likely consuming a lot of dogma and propaganda from terrorist groups such as ISIS online," said retired FBI agent Michael Tabman.
Safety concerns remain a top priority in Boston, where city leaders remarked on the safety efforts by local law enforcement.
"Our Boston police and all the partners they have at various levels of law enforcement work really hard to anticipate and plan," Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said. "Months of planning can go into it, the unexpected can always happen but we do our very best with the technology, the preparation, the coordination to make sure that all of those situations are accounted for."
Many in the area were reminded of the Boston Marathon bombings. Former Boston Police Commissioner William Evans spoke about the lessons learned since the attack more than 11 years ago.
"It's sad. I know there's a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking on the police here, but it's hard. Public events are tough to police," Evans said. "We've had to put a lot more preventative measures. I was police commissioner the next year after the bombings and we have the snow plows and the DPW trucks at every intersection. We had bags [checked] of everyone going near the finish."
"I think we're always at a high level of alert and awareness in Massachusetts and around the country," added Gov. Maura Healey. "That's the nature of the times we're in."
Rhode Island resident Bruce Bartell and his family are in New Orleans for the Sugar Bowl, as his son William is a punter for Notre Dame. He shared his experience with WJAR on Wednesday.
"You always think it's going to happen somewhere else," he said. "And you're always surprised when you're right alongside it or adjacent to it."
Bartell's family was fast asleep, about a mile away from Bourbon Street, when the attack happened.
"We didn't hear anything. We saw fireworks at midnight, and then stayed up talking and then we just found out on the news," he said.
Heather O'Bryan, of Maine, was in the French Quarter on vacation just hours before the attack happened.
She told News Center Maine that she, her husband and some friends spent time on Bourbon Street on Tuesday afternoon and then watched fireworks at midnight in a different part of the city. They were back at their Airbnb, about a mile from the French Quarter, when the attack occurred.
O'Bryan didn't witness the attack, but said when she learned about it, her mind immediately went to the locals and tourists she had met the day before.
"You think of the poor victims and who you might have come across," she said. "Are they visiting or are they local? It's just a really hard way to start the new year when you were so hopeful and so filled with community the night before, whether you live in this community or not."
O'Bryan also said she learned that investigators and law enforcement had found explosives in two garbage cans in the area where she and her husband had been just a day earlier. "So that's a little unnerving," she said.
