Sister shares heartbreaking final text New Orleans terror victim sent before he was murdered on Bourbon Street

The sister of a 21-year-old killed in the savage terror attack in New Orleans shared his heartbreaking final text: “Happy New Year.I love you.”Hubert Gauthreaux sent the message to his sister Brooke at 12:08 a.m., hours before a terrorist drove into a crowd of revelers on Bourbon Street, injuring 35 and killing Gauthreaux and 13 others.Gauthreaux had traveled from the nearby town of Marrero to usher in the New Year in the New Orleans French Quarter.He saw it only three hours of 2025 before Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42, rammed a rented pickup truck bearing an Islamic State flag down three blocks of the narrow street packed shoulder-to-shoulder with revelers.Jabbar died in a shootout with cops after crashing the truck.

“I woke up yesterday and a piece of me was gone,” Brooke Gauthreaux wrote on social media after the tragedy.“I don’t know how I’m supposed to go on without you.

Without expecting a random phone call from you just to talk for an hour while you’re driving home, for advice, for you to vent or to get your little s–t ass out of trouble,” the message continued.Authorities shut down Bourbon Street for 36 hours after the attack.When it reopened, mourners began to place flowers, crosses, and mementos at a spot near the scene the the attack, covering a wall with hand-written messages to the dead.The Gauthreaux family was among them, walking to the memorial with a police escort, arm-in-arm.“He was a light in our lives.

He was someone who gave generously and brought joy to everyone he knew, and he had so much more life left to live,” Brooke Gauthreaux said in a prepared statement.Meanwhile, Bourbon Street, the epicenter of New Orleans revelry, has gradually come back to life, once again buzzing with shops and cafes, street performers, and music thrumming from open jazz bars.“The word ‘resilient’ has become synonymous with the city of New Orleans,” city councilwoman Lesli Harris told the New York Times.

“We are resilient because we ...