Louisiana
All 14 people killed in New Orleans terrorist attack identified • Louisiana Illuminator
NEW ORLEANS — All 14 people killed in Wednesday morning’s terror attack on Bourbon Street have been identified, either through family members or verification from the local coroner.
LaTasha Polk, 47, of New Orleans was the final person whose name was unknown until family members confirmed she had died to The Times-Picayune. She was celebrating New Year’s Eve in the French Quarter with her brother, Prentiss Polk, who is still missing, according to the report.
BBC News confirmed Edward Pettifer, 31, of England was also among those killed. He was the stepson of the former nanny for Prince William and Price Harry..
Orleans Parish Coroner Dr. Dwight McKenna did not share Pettifer’s name Friday when he released the names of 12 of the deceased, citing the wishes of his family. The remaining victim, Polk, was identified only as a Black woman on the coroner’s list.
As of Friday, McKenna said he has yet to release the body of Shamsud-Din Jabbar at the direction of federal investigators.The 42-year-old Texas native tore through a three-block section of the French Quarter in the early hours of New Year’s Day.
More than three dozen people were injured, including two New Orleans police officers who were shot during a gunfight with Jabbar, who was killed after firing at law enforcement after he crashed his rented Ford F-15o pickup truck into a lift vehicle.
A large crowd gathered Saturday night for a vigil ceremony at a memorial site that has materialized on Bourbon, just feet from where Jabbar entered Bourbon Street. Flowers, crosses, stuffed animals and candles are being placed next to a hydraulic street barrier, which wasn’t in place ahead of New Year’s Eve.
Other fatalities
Nikyra Cheyenne Dedeaux, 18, of Gulfport, Mississippi. The Times-Picayune reported she had accompanied her cousin and friend to the French Quarter for New Year’s Eve, her mother said.
Hubert Gauthreaux, 21, of Gretna. He graduated from Archbishop Shaw High School in 2021 and was remembered as a bright and promising young man, according to the school representative.
Martin “Tiger” Bech, 28, of New York. Bech was a graduate of St. Thomas More Catholic High School in Lafayette who graduated from Princeton University, where he played on the football team. KLFY-TV in Lafayette reported Bech worked for a financial firm in New York. His brother Jack, who played for LSU before transferring to Texas Tech.
Reggie Hunter, 37, of Baton Rouge. WAFB-TV reported the father of two made a last-minute decision to travel to the French Quarter with his cousin, who was also struck by the truck and injured.
The Sigma Chi International Fraternity and the Iota Iota chapter at the University of Alabama mourn the loss of Kareem Badawi, ALABAMA 2028, (right) who was tragically killed in the terrorist attack in New Orleans on Jan. 1, 2025. All honor to his name 🤍 pic.twitter.com/sIk2pn3ZYH
— Sigma Chi Fraternity (@SigmaChi) January 2, 2025
Kareem Badawi, 18, of Baton Rouge. The 2024 graduate of Episcopal High School was a student at the University of Alabama. WAFB-TV reported the school sent a message to parents Wednesday about Badawi’s death. His classmate, Parker Vidrine, was also injured in the attack.

Nicole Perez, 27, of Metairie. The Times-Picayune reported she was the mother of a 4-year-old son and was recently promoted to a manager at the deli where she worked.
Drew Dauphin, 26, of Montgomery, Alabama. He was an engineer who worked for Honda, according to a report from AL.com.
Matthew Tendorio, 25, an audiovisual technician at the Superdome from Carriere, Mississippi. His family has created an GoFundMe donation page to help cover the cost of his funeral.
Billy DeMaio, 25, of Homedel, New Jersey. He was an account executive with Audacy Inc.
Terrence Kennedy, 63 of New Orleans. WDSU-TV first confirmed his death in the attack. Kennedy’s family told The Times-Picayune he had gone out for a drink in the French Quarter to celebrate New Year’s Eve.
Brandon Taylor, 43, of Terrytown. The Times-Picayune reported that Taylor was with his fiancée at a club in the 300 block of Bourbon Street early Wednesday morning. He stepped out onto the street near a lift vehicle just before Jabbar crashed his truck into it. It’s believed Taylor was the last person he struck.
Elliot Wilkinson, 40, of Lafayette. His brother, Cecil, posted on his Facebook page that he was notified Friday morning that his brother was among the fatalities. KPEL-FM reported that the Orleans Parish coroner had contacted the family.
The injured
The University of Georgia, whose football team took part in the Sugar Bowl college football playoff game against Notre Dame, confirmed that one of its students was critically injured in the terror attack. WBBH-TV confirmed the student is 19-year-old Elle Eisele of Fort Myers, Florida.
Eisele’s high school classmate, Steele Idelson, 19, was also hurt. She is a student at San Diego State University.
Adam Coste, an employee of the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, suffered “extensive injuries to his lower extremities,” according to a friend who created a GoFundMe page to help with medical expenses. He identified Coste as an Army veteran.
Jeremi Sensky of Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, was paralyzed from the waist down before Wednesday’s attack. He was in his wheelchair going back to his French Quarter hotel room after dinner when Jabbar’s truck struck him on Bourbon Street, NBC News reported. He sustained two broken legs and needed surgery.
Alexis Scott-Windham of Mobile, Alabama, was struck by Jabbar’s truck then shot in the foot when he exchanged gunfire with police, The Times-Picayune reported. Her friend, Brandon Whitsett, was also hit by the truck and suffered multiple injuries. Two others in their group received minor injuries.
Two visitors from Mexico were also among the injured, WVUE-TV Fox 8 reported. Both are in stable condition at a local hospital, and the Mexican consulate in New Orleans is working to keep their families informed.
ABC News reported that two Israeli nationals were injured. Israel’s consulate is sending a representative to New Orleans.
Lone actor
Jabbar posted five videos on his Facebook page in the two hours before he made his fatal drive down Bourbon Street. In one video recorded while he was driving from Houston to New Orleans, Jabbar said he “joined ISIS before the summer,” FBI Deputy Director Christopher Raia said at a news conference Thursday.
The pickup Jabbar drove was rented Monday in Houston, and he made the trip to New Orleans on New Year’s Eve. Investigators believe he built improvised explosive devices at a short-term rental property 2 miles from the French Quarter.
One of the IEDs was found inside the pickup truck, which featured an Islamic State flag on a pole attached to its trailer hitch. The FBI said Friday a working remote detonation device was also found inside the truck.
Raia said surveillance video shows Jabbar placing a cooler with a homemade bomb inside at the intersection of Bourbon and Orleans streets and a second device two blocks away. Both were safely detonated after the French Quarter was cleared and police swept the neighborhood for evidence and other explosives.
“Precursor chemicals” for bomb making were found in the mobile home where Jabbar lived in north Houston, according to the FBI. Agents broke down the door of the residence Thursday and returned to the site Friday in search of more evidence.
The FBI is saying their investigation to this point indicates Jabbar acted alone in planning the terror attack. Agents do not currently believe there are any links between the incident in New Orleans and Wednesday’s explosion of a Tesla Cybertruck outside the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas.
The driver of the truck, U.S. Army Master Sgt. Matthew Livelsberger, 37, left notes on his iPhone praising President-elect Donald Trump and Elon Musk and criticizing Democrats, the FBI said. Livelsberger committed suicide before the explosion, according to investigators.
This report was updated at 8 p.m. Saturday.
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Louisiana
DOJ ends another desegregation consent decree in Louisiana
Donald Trump is leading the most openly pro-segregation administration in recent American history, and it advanced that agenda this week when it killed yet another school desegregation agreement with a Louisiana parish.
The Associated Press reported Thursday that the Trump administration got a George W. Bush-appointed judge to lift another decades-old anti-segregation consent decree in the Bayou State.
Per the AP:
A federal judge on Monday approved a joint motion from Louisiana and the U.S. Justice Department to dismiss a 1967 lawsuit in DeSoto Parish schools, a district of about 5,000 students in the state’s northwest. It’s the second such dismissal since the Justice Department began working to overturn desegregation cases it once championed. Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill thanked President Donald Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi on Wednesday for ‘helping us to finally end some of these cases.’
The AP quoted Murrill saying, “DeSoto Parish has its school system back,” and that “for the last 10 years, there have been no disputes among the parties, yet the consent decree remained.”
Of course, the absence of disputes under a consent decree is not exactly proof that the consent decree is no longer needed. To borrow an analogy from the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in her dissent from Shelby County, to throw out a consent decree because there’s been no resegregation or discrimination “is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.”
This follows the administration in February removing language that banned federal contractors from operating segregated facilities, and its decision last spring to quash a different consent decree with Louisiana’s Plaquemines Parish.
Louisiana
Louisiana task force confronts future of Greek life, pushes new hazing safeguards
BATON ROUGE, La (Louisiana First) — The final meeting for the Caleb Wilson Hazing Prevention Task Force took place Thursday.
The committee, organized by the Louisiana Board of Regents, brought together lawmakers, university leaders, student advisors, and hazing prevention stakeholders to make sure no Louisiana family loses another student to hazing.
State representative Vanessa LaFleur, a leading voice on this task force, said, “We don’t want there to ever be another Max [Gruver], or another Caleb in the state of Louisiana.”
Her statement referenced two high-profile hazing deaths that reshaped the conversation around student organizations in the state. Members echoed the sentiment that this isn’t just an isolated issue; it’s a culture issue.
“There are things that shift culture, things that create culture,” said Winton Anderson. “And what we were doing today was not only dealing with the prevention piece as much as dealing with the accountability piece.”
Task force leaders said Thursday’s meeting was about closing gaps in oversight, enforcement, and advisor responsibility for all Louisiana schools.
“Today, what you saw is closing the gap of our attempt to close the gap on what we believe are going to be the next phase of policies to help us ensure that there’s accountability at every level,” said Anderson.
The policy reform is key, but leaders said education is the foundation.
“The key to this is education,” said LaFleur. “And I think we’ve put in the safeguards for that. Safeguards will be there when the legislation drops. We’ve got to show them why hazing does not create sisterhood, why hazing does not create. But what it does is it destroys.”
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Louisiana
Louisiana races to hire AI workers as majority of pilot projects fail
Demand for more Midwest data centers skyrockets
What are data centers and why are they needed?
Nearly all corporate artificial intelligence pilot projects fail to deliver measurable business value, according to new research — a finding that comes as Louisiana companies accelerate AI hiring faster than the data workforce needed to support it.
A national analysis by data consultancy DoubleTrack found that 95% of generative AI pilot projects fail to produce measurable profits, a rate that researchers attribute largely to weak data infrastructure rather than shortcomings in AI technology itself.
Despite that failure rate, Louisiana employers are hiring AI specialists far faster than data infrastructure workers. The study found Louisiana companies posted 151% more AI and machine-learning jobs than data infrastructure roles, ranking the state among the most imbalanced AI labor markets in the country.
According to the analysis, Louisiana employers advertised 548 AI-related positions compared with 218 data infrastructure jobs, meaning companies are hiring more than two AI specialists for every data engineer or platform specialist; the reverse of what experts recommend.
According to the study, industry consensus suggests that organizations should hire at least two data infrastructure professionals for every AI specialist to ensure that data is reliable, integrated, and usable. Without that foundation, AI systems often stall or are abandoned.
The consequences are already visible nationwide. Research cited in the report shows 42% of companies scrapped most of their AI initiatives in 2025, more than double the abandonment rate from the year before.
The findings carry particular significance for Louisiana as the state courts data centers, advanced manufacturing and digital infrastructure projects, including large-scale developments proposed in Caddo and Bossier parishes. While such projects promise billions in capital investment, they depend on robust data pipelines, power reliability and utility coordination — areas that require deep data infrastructure expertise.
Data centers, in particular, employ relatively few permanent workers but rely heavily on specialized data engineers to manage system redundancy, cybersecurity, data flow and integration with cloud and AI platforms. A shortage of those workers could limit the long-term impact of the projects Louisiana is working to attract.
The report also raises questions for workforce development and higher education. Louisiana universities have expanded AI-related coursework in recent years, but researchers say data engineering, database management and system integration skills are just as critical — and often in shorter supply.
Only 6% of enterprise AI leaders nationwide believe their data systems are ready to support AI projects, and 71% of AI teams spend more than a quarter of their time on basic data preparation and system integration rather than advanced analytics or model development, according to research cited in the study.
Those infrastructure gaps can have ripple effects beyond technology firms. Utilities, energy producers, health systems and logistics companies — all major pillars of Louisiana’s economy — increasingly rely on AI tools that require clean, connected data to function reliably.
DoubleTrack recommends companies adopt a 2-to-1 hiring ratio, with two data infrastructure hires for every AI specialist, to reduce failure rates.
“The businesses most at risk aren’t the ones moving slowly on AI,” said Andy Boettcher, the firm’s chief innovation officer. “They’re the ones who hired aggressively for AI roles without investing in data quality and infrastructure.”
As Louisiana pushes to position itself as a hub for data-driven industries, researchers say closing the gap between AI ambition and data readiness may determine whether those investments succeed — or quietly join the 95% that do not.
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