NEW ORLEANS The last thing Jeremi Sensky remembers before he ended himself face down on the ground with his wheelchair broken around him was a “massive noise” he heard on his way back to his hotel after meeting friends early on New Year’s Day.
Sensky was spared in Wednesday morning’s deadly terrorist attack on Bourbon Street, where a Texas man, motivated by Islamic State ideology, crashed a vehicle into a group of partygoers in the French Quarter of New Orleans. He is recuperating from two broken legs and spoke to NBC News from his hospital room.
“I m assuming I got hit by the truck, but honestly, nobody s ever told me that, so I don t know,” Sensky stated. “But my wheelchair was completely bashed and the pieces were all over the place, so something hit me.”
Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42, traveled to Louisiana from his Texas residence on New Year’s Eve and shared multiple recordings on social media, according to the FBI. In the films, Jabbar said that he had originally intended to harm his friends and family but changed his mind and launched a larger assault to highlight the conflict between believers and unbelievers.
Before he was killed in a gunfight with police, he swerved over barriers and police and crashed a rented Ford F-150 onto the pavement into a throng. Dozens of people were injured and 14 people were killed in the attack.
Sensky crashed into the crowd, directly next to Jabbar’s truck.
“It all happened so fast,” he claimed. He was on the ground amid the roar of gunshots pouring from all sides one second, and then he was turning around again.
“I just heard screaming and I heard gunfire,” he remembered.
He started yelling for assistance since he couldn’t find his phone.
“No one would come, and so I pushed myself on my back, and I saw people, and they were taking pictures from the balcony, and I was screaming out for help, and people were just looking at me,” Sensky recalled.
Eventually, a police officer named Patrick approached him and informed him that numerous people had died, according to Sensky. He was fortunate to be alive, the officer told him.
“I kept asking for someone to help me and get me out of there, and it took a while,” Sensky stated. “I realized that it was a bad scene.”
Sensky, who was paralyzed from the waist down before the attack, doesn’t believe anyone realized he couldn’t walk as they took in the chaos of the scene. Eventually, he was carried to an ambulance and taken to the hospital, where he underwent surgery.
His right leg was broken in a “million pieces,” but he said it saved him.
Sensky said the entire experience has been “surreal.” He teared up talking about the attack, emotional in his disbelief that anyone could do such a thing.
“I adore everyone. “Everyone,” stated Sensky. “I can t believe that that would happen.”
Tom Llamas reported from New Orleans and Doha Madani from New York City.
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