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President Biden and the first lady joined a city already exhausted by disaster to remember the victims of a Jan. 1 terror attack on Bourbon Street.
Jan. 6, 2025, 9:02 p.m. ET
The most famous street in New Orleans, lined with iron lace balconies and typically packed with tourists spilling from bars and jazz clubs, transformed into a crime scene on Jan. 1 when a man drove a pickup truck into crowds celebrating the dawn of the new year.
By Monday, a stretch of Bourbon Street had become a memorial to the 14 people killed in the attack there, and President Biden flew in to speak at a vigil for the victims, declaring that the city would overcome what he called a “horrific act of terrorism.”
In the St. Louis Cathedral, Mr. Biden addressed a crowd that included Gov. Jeff Landry of Louisiana, a Republican, and Mayor LaToya Cantrell of New Orleans, as well as local law enforcement officials in uniform. The cathedral was still decorated for Christmas, with red poinsettias in gold-foil-wrapped pots lining the interior, and trees at the front of the nave topped with bows.
“If there’s one thing we know, New Orleans defines strength and resilience — you define it,” Mr. Biden told the crowd. “Whether it’s in the form of this attack, or hurricanes or super storms, this city and its people get back up. That’s the spirit of America as well.”
Archbishop Gregory M. Aymond of New Orleans acknowledged the loss and pain that the attack had brought, and said that the evening’s observances were on behalf of those who were killed and injured.
“This attack was not just a wound to New Orleans, but it was a wound to our nation, to our world and to our search for freedom,” he said.
