New Orleans attack victim’s fiancee condemns city over security failings
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Heather Genusa, engaged to Brandon Taylor, calls decision not to place barriers on Bourbon Street ‘a horrible disgrace’. A woman who saw her fiance get run over and killed alongside 13 other victims of the Bourbon Street truck attack on New Year’s Day in New Orleans says city officials “need to pay” the consequences after evidently opting against using multiple types of vehicle barriers that could have protected the targeted crowd.
![[A yellow, L-shaped barrier is being set up at the entrance of a street]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/1ccb72430880379d1247fb90e4c43d5e6a9b86db/0_100_3000_1800/master/3000.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
“He died for no reason,” Heather Genusa, 38, said of 43-year-old Brandon Taylor, to whom she was engaged to be married. “The city really let everyone down that day. It’s a horrible disgrace.”. Genusa delivered her anguished remarks in an interview with the Guardian after the newspaper and other media outlets reported that three types of protective barriers were missing when a US army veteran flying the Islamic State (IS) terror group’s flag drove a pickup truck into a crowd of revelers on Bourbon Street early New Year’s Day morning.
![[A type of barrier that resembles a ramp Bourbon Street in its up position after it is reopened to the public in New Orleans. When in this position, the barrier can stop drivers coming toward the camera and the front of the ramp.]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/2cf554cb5cce940f0f7d8b11c659b83893860893/0_208_6240_3744/master/6240.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
Perhaps the most conspicuous were 700lb, steel, L-shaped Archer barriers that can be deployed three or four abreast across a roadway and on sidewalks to stop even speeding motorists by tilting back if struck, wedging under their vehicles and damaging them. One such barrier stopped a motorist who allegedly had a history of mental illness and rammed it while trying to barrel into a crowd of unsuspected spectators at the Pasadena, California, Rose Parade on New Year’s Day 2024.
![[People walk past cylindrical columns. ]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/ceccacb6b416e06720233749844e25677999f376/0_273_8192_4918/master/8192.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
