Witness recounts horror of New Orleans terrorist attack: ‘It still doesn’t even seem real’

Tina Nabhan said she and her husband, Nedal, frequently travel to New Orleans.

“My husband just loves Notre Dame and the fact that it was New Year’s Eve was a bonus,” said Tina Nabhan, who also has business in Louisiana, speaking by phone on Sunday after the couple returned home. “We travel there all the time. It’s like a second home.

The Portage couple arrived in New Orleans on Dec. 30 with plans to stay at the Royal Sonesta on Bourbon Street, have some fun on New Year’s Eve, attend the Notre Dame-Georgia Sugar Bowl game on New Year’s Day, and fly home on Jan. 2.

On New Year’s Eve, the couple walked to hear a live band in Jackson Square nearby and went to a cigar bar they like for a low-key celebration before heading back to the Royal Sonesta and going to bed by 12:30 a.m.

“We didn’t go there to party,” Tina Nabhan said, adding they have been to New Orleans for Mardi Gras before.

What the Nabhans didn’t expect was to be awakened in the middle of the night by the sound of a crash and gunfire.

“My husband woke up before I did, hearing the crash. The gunshots were immediately after that,” Tina Nabhan said, adding the terrorist attack by a U.S. citizen who had proclaimed his support for the Islamist State militant group, which killed 14 people and injured dozens more, took place at the end of their hotel.

The driver, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a U.S. citizen from Texas, also died in a shootout with police. Officials have said he drove a pickup truck into a crowd of people.

Tina Nabhan was a firefighter/paramedic and assistant chief of EMS for the South Haven Volunteer Fire Department for 13 years, from 2007 until 2020, and is now an insurance adjuster for policyholders. Nedal Nabhan is a 17-year detective with Indiana State Police’s Lowell Post trained in active shooter response.

A memorial for the victims of a deadly truck attack on New Year’s Day stands on the sidewalk in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Friday, Jan. 3, 2025. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)

Nedal Nabhan could not comment for this story per ISP protocol, but Sgt. Glen Fifield, public information officer for the Lowell Post, released a statement that “a member of our agency experienced first-hand the aftermath of the tragedy that unfolded in New Orleans.”

The couple’s hotel room was on the third floor. Nedal Nabhan looked out the window and saw police officers in tactical gear and bodies on the ground.

Tina Nabhan said her husband told her to “get in the (expletive) bathroom right now” while he got his clothes on.

“I was like, ‘what are you doing?’” she said, adding that after about 30 minutes of hiding in the hotel room’s bathroom, she went to look out the window and saw a body. She sent her husband a text. “I had no idea what’s happening.”

Around that time, she heard static on the hotel’s public address system before an evacuation alarm went off. Nedal Nabhan was back in the room by then and told her to pack all of their belongings because they wouldn’t be returning.

FILE - An Islamic State flag lies on the ground rolled up behind the pickup truck that Shamsud-Din Jabbar drove into a crowd on Bourbon Street in New Orleans on Wednesday, Jan. 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)
An Islamic State flag lies on the ground rolled up behind the pickup truck that Shamsud-Din Jabbar drove into a crowd on Bourbon Street in New Orleans on Wednesday, Jan. 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)

After Nedal Nabhan secured his wife in their hotel room, he went to the front desk and asked for a medical kit and a way out of the hotel other than through the lobby. He triaged a police officer and two civilians wounded in the attack, using a luggage cart to whisk them to a back staircase where they could be safely evacuated.

“Even when I came down later there were bloody towels and stuff” in the lobby, Tina Nabhan said.

The Nabhans walked several blocks from the scene and caught an Uber to a hotel on the other side of town. No one knew then it was a terrorist attack, Tina Nabhan said, and that possibility wasn’t on her mind.

She said her husband decided in a matter of seconds to get dressed and help the victims of the attack, though she found it “really hard” to stay behind.

“The cops go in first and make sure things are safe and it’s hard when your husband is doing that, especially your unarmed husband because we were traveling,” Tina Nabhan said.

She said she and Nedal have always felt safe in New Orleans and that won’t change.

“There’s so many police down there all the time,” she said, adding officers patrol on foot or horseback.

Kelli Galle, right, hugs her son Parker, left, as they visit a memorial to the victims of a deadly truck attack on Bourbon Street in the French Quarter, Friday, Jan. 3, 2025, in New Orleans. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
Kelli Galle, right, hugs her son Parker, left, as they visit a memorial to the victims of a deadly truck attack on Bourbon Street in the French Quarter, Friday, Jan. 3, 2025, in New Orleans. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)

After the Sugar Bowl, postponed for a day because of the terrorist attack, Tina Nabhan said she and Nedal went back to Bourbon Street to look at the memorials set out for those who died and to talk about what happened.

“It still doesn’t even seem real,” she said.

The Nabhans plan to return to New Orleans soon, likely around Mardi Gras.

alavalley@chicagotribune.com

The Associated Press contributed.

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