At 03:15 local time on New Year’s Day, a Ford pickup plowed into a crowd of people gathered on Bourbon Street in the heart of New Orleans’ French Quarter.
Surveillance footage shows a white Ford F-150 Lightning pull onto the sidewalk to avoid a police car before hitting the pedestrians.
Police described the act as “very deliberate”, adding that the attacker – identified as Shamsud-Din Jabbar – was “bent on creating carnage and causing harm”.
“This person was trying to run over as many people as possible,” New Orleans Police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick said.
Jabbar was also armed and fired at law enforcement officers, injuring two officers. He was then killed by police fire.
Whit Davis, from Shreveport, Louisiana, told the BBC he was held in a bar with a large group after the attack while police secured the scene.
As they left, they “passed bodies of dead and wounded all over the street,” he said.
