The Washington County man who survived a New Orleans terrorist attack that killed 14 people and injured 30 more survived hours of surgery Thursday and is breathing on his own after being taken off a ventilator, his family said.
Jeremi Sensky, 51, of Canonsburg, was among a throng of New Year’s Day revelers who were rammed by a pickup in the city’s French Quarter early Wednesday.
Sensky told NBC Nightly News on Thursday in an interview from his New Orleans hospital bed about the attacker smashing his wheelchair and knocking him with the speeding vehicle.
“When I turned around pretty much all I remembered until I was on the ground and I came back and there was this people screaming, and I was laying on the ground and I saw all my wheelchair parts on the ground beside me,” Sensky said. “Somebody came … a cop, his nickname was Patrick, he came over and he told me that there was a lot of people didn’t make it … and I was lucky to be alive. I kept asking for someone to help me, to get me out of there.”
The FBI said the truck attacker, an Army veteran from Texas whom authorities identified as 42-year-old Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar, acted alone in an “act of terrorism” when he drove a pickup into the crowd.
President Joe Biden told reporters the driver posted videos on social media hours before the carnage saying he was inspired by the Islamic State group and expressing a desire to kill.
Sensky’s two legs were crushed in the incident, his daughter, Heaven Sensky Kirsch, told TribLive on Thursday. She said a bone was protruding from one of her father’s legs before the surgery.
Sensky, who has used a wheelchair since being injured in a car accident several years ago, was thrown into the street in New Orleans, Kirsch said.
A police officer marked on Sensky’s forehead that the Pittsburgh-area man was alive, then told him to wait while first responders tended to others, Kirsch said. Sensky told his family he heard multiple gunshots as he lay on the ground.
The alleged attacker was killed Wednesday in a gunfight with police, authorities said.
Sensky and his family had traveled by car to Louisiana after stopping in Nashville around the holidays.
The family began to worry early Wednesday when Sensky didn’t return to his hotel room on Magazine Street, a six-mile stretch that runs along the Mississippi River and connects Downtown New Orleans to the city’s tree-shaded Garden District.
Kirsch said she later found her father in a local trauma unit. A lengthy surgery followed.
“My dad is a fighter, and loves to live life,” Kirsch wrote on Facebook. “We are so grateful. So grateful.”
The attack unfolded on Bourbon Street, known worldwide as one of the largest destinations for New Year’s Eve parties.
Large crowds had also gathered in the city ahead of the College Football Playoff quarterfinal at the Sugar Bowl, which had been scheduled for later Wednesday at the nearby Superdome. The game was postponed following the attack.