Families of New Orleans victims seek answers in deadly New Year’s Eve attack

Just hours before the clock struck midnight on New Year’s Eve, Jack Bech received a phone call with his older brother Martin, an avid outdoorsman and former soccer star known primarily to friends and teammates as “Tiger.”

Jack, 22, was in Dallas visiting relatives, while Tiger, a 28-year-old Princeton alum living in New York, was in New Orleans, preparing to celebrate the New Year.

“We just thought it was going to be another conversation,” he told the BBC. “I was showing him what we were eating and he was showing us what he was eating.”

The two brothers would never speak again.

“I hung up the phone and that was the last time I spoke to him,” Jack recalls.

Tiger was among 14 people killed when a gunman drove into a crowd on Bourbon Street in New Orleans.

The attacker, army veteran Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42, was killed in a shootout with police after drove a van into the crowdaccording to the authorities. Although he posted videos online proclaiming allegiance to the Islamic State group before the attack, FBI officials said they believe he was acting alone.

While the identities of all the victims have not yet been made public, a picture is slowly emerging. from a group of mostly young peoplemany of whom, like Tiger, were Louisiana locals.

Jack, who remembers his brother as his best friend, role model and inspiration, says the close-knit Bech family will never be the same.

Most of the family lives in the city of Lafayette, about 136 miles (218 kilometers) from New Orleans.

“This is something we’re going to have to deal with. Every time we wake up and every time we go to sleep, it’s going to be something,” he added. “Every holiday there will be an empty seat at the table.”

But Tiger said his brother “wouldn’t want us to grieve and lament.” Instead, he has encouraged his family to remember him as “a fighter.”

“He would want us to keep attacking life…he would want us to go and be there for each other,” she said.

“I told my family that instead of seeing him a couple of times a year, he would be with us all the time,” Jack added. “Whenever we wake up, go to sleep and walk, whenever we’re at work, doing whatever, he’ll be with us.”

Among the other victims of the attack that occurred in the early morning hours of January 1 was Matthew Tenedorio, an audiovisual technician at Caesars’ Superdome in New Orleans.

Tenedorio, who had just turned 25 in October, had spent the first part of the evening at his brother’s house in the city of Slidell, about 35 minutes from New Orleans.

With him were his father and mother, who recently recovered from cancer.

Her cousin, Christina Bounds, told the BBC that her family “begged” her not to go to New Orleans, fearful of the large crowds and potential dangers.

Despite her pleas, he went along with two friends. When the news broke, his mother finally managed to contact one of them.

“They said they were walking through Bourbon and saw a body fall,” he said, noting that they now believe it was a body thrown into the air by the attacker’s truck.

Amid screams and gunshots, Tenedorio was separated from his friends.

His family says he was shot and believe he was killed during the exchange of gunfire between the gunman and police officers on Bourbon Street.

The BBC cannot independently verify this claim.

According to Bounds, the family’s tragedy has been made more painful by the slow and almost non-existent communication they have had with local authorities.

“We couldn’t get any information when my aunt (Tenedorio’s mother, Cathy) showed up at the hospital,” he said. “There has been no information from doctors, hospitals or police. Nobody.”

“They don’t have any information, and that’s what bothers everyone. We don’t even know what happened,” Bounds added. “Did EMS get him out? Was he in an ambulance? Did he die instantly?”

These answers, he added, would “help people accept” what happened.

“But now it’s like a total shock,” he added. “It’s not registering.”

The family has started a GoFundMe page to raise money for Tenedorio’s funeral expenses, which Bounds said have been made difficult by his mother’s significant medical bills during her cancer diagnosis.

Another of Tenedorio’s cousins, Zach Colgan, remembers him as a “goofball” who was quick to crack jokes, cared deeply about animals and was an avid storyteller.

“He cared. He was definitely a people person. A happy-go-lucky guy,” Colgan told the BBC. “It’s sad that a terrorist attack took him away…no family should have to bury their child, especially for something so senseless.”

Colgan, who has experience working with law enforcement in Louisiana, says he believes officers have done the best they can in an extremely hectic victim situation.

“I know it’s chaotic. But part of closure is getting answers. I know my uncles couldn’t get much more than ‘yes, Matthew was murdered,'” she said.

“It would be nice to know a little more,” Colgan added. “If it were my son, I would want to know.”

Even as his family continues to search for answers, Colgan says he hopes the government and public continue to focus on the victims, rather than the authorities’ response or what more could have been done to prevent the attack.

“I want each one of them to be remembered,” he said. “They didn’t deserve this. Nobody deserves this.”