A Britton family vacationing in New Orleans woke on New Year’s Day to a series of texts and messages inquiring about their safety.
Brad Bender, his wife and his two sons stayed in the French Quarter about four blocks away from where the driver of a truck steered around a police blockade and into a Bourbon Street crowd of new year revelers.
None of the Benders were injured, but Brad said he and his oldest son were in a bar about two blocks away from the incident until roughly 15 minutes before it happened.
He and Zachary, 24, decided to call it a night at 3 a.m. and walked a couple of blocks to the Quarter House where they were staying. They didn’t hear about the attack until the next morning.
The building housing the Quarter House was originally built before the Civil War. Because of how it was constructed, Brad said he and his family couldn’t hear anything once they got inside.
That wasn’t the case when he and Zachary were at the bar, but police sirens are so common in the French Quarter that nobody thinks much of them, Brad said.
Were Brad’s youngest son, Gage, 21, out late, it’s likely the group would have been on Bourbon Street at the time of the attack, Brad said.
After getting many messages the morning of Jan. 1, the Benders turned on the TV to see what had happened.
Needless to say, the atmosphere had changed overnight. The mood was somber on the first days of 2025, Brad said.
While there was a large security presence on New Year’s Eve, it was even more pronounced the next morning, he said, with the FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms on the scene.
Bourbon Street was shut down for 48 hours, altering the family’s Jan. 1 intentions. The plan was to visit Louis Armstrong Park, but the only way to get there was to walk around the crime scene, so the Benders instead took a trolley tour and checked out the ornate houses in the Garden District, then went to bed early, Brad said.
He visited with The Aberdeen Insider on Thursday, Jan. 2 while waiting for a tour of a New Orleans plantation to begin.
The trip was a Christmas gift for Bender, his sons and Jane, his wife. They got to New Orleans on Sunday, Dec. 29 and returned home Saturday, Jan. 4.
As a result of the attack, the Sugar Bowl football game between Notre Dame and Georgia set to be played in the Superdome was postponed from Jan. 1 to Jan. 2, but Brad said the Benders didn’t plan their visit to go to the game.
At least 14 people died as a result of the attack with another three dozen or so injured.
The FBI has identified Shamsud Din Jabbar, 42, of Texas, a U.S. Army veteran, as the driver of the truck. Jabbar was shot and killed after he opened fire on law enforcement officers. The FBI has described the incident as a terror attack.
