NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — On Thursday, business owners on New Orleans’ Bourbon Street said it’s back to business as usual, after the deadly New Year’s Eve attack.
Bourbon Street reopened Thursday and was lined with new barriers meant to reinforce pedestrian areas. The move comes as investigators reveal more details about the suspect, accused of plowing through the crowd and killing several people.
New photos from the FBI included an “information wanted” poster where they showed the suspect walking around in a long brown coat and dress shows. Also included on the poster is a picture of a cooler with an explosive inside, placed near Bourbon Street.
The attack is one of the latest in a string of incidents where vehicles have been used as weapons. The act, called “vehicle ramming,” dates back decades according to the FBI.
“Using a vehicle as a weapon is quite infrequent. It’s about 3 times per year, but what’s occurring is so terrifying that we pay so much more attention to it,” explained Aaron Brinen, an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences with the Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
Brinen explained that vehicles are used because they’re easy to bring to large events and incite a lot of terror. Over four years ago, the country’s attention was on downtown Nashville due to a vehicular terror attack after a man parked an RV in downtown Nashville. Soon after, the driver caused an explosion that injured 8 people. Only the driver died.
According to an FBI handout, suspects with “limited access to explosives or weapons,” can use vehicles to cause harm “with minimal prior training or experience.”
“If your goal is to terrify people and scare people, it accomplishes that,” Brinen said. “It really strikes at this idea of something that’s extremely safe and we think of as ubiquitous to all of our lives.”
Just hours after the deadly New Orleans attack, in Las Vegas a Cybertruck was used to cause an explosion outside of Trump’s hotel. Last month, a man rented an SUV before deliberately driving through a German Christmas market, killing five people and injuring more than 200.
Brinen also noted that despite these high-profile incidents, the vast number of mass casualties are the result of firearms.
