New Orleans Police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick promises that “hundreds of officers” will line the city’s streets ahead of Thursday’s relocated Sugar Bowl in the latest security effort following Wednesday’s terrorist attack in the French Quarter.
“We have a staffing level at the same level, if not more, than what we were preparing for the Super Bowl,” Kirkpatrick told NBC Today.
The College Football Playoff Sugar Bowl quarterfinal between Georgia and Notre Dame was postponed a day because of an attack about a mile away from the Superdome early Wednesday, when authorities said a truck driver deliberately drove into a New Year’s Eve crowd, killing 15 killed people.
The game, originally scheduled for Wednesday at 7:45 PM CST in the 70,000-seat Superdome, was postponed to Thursday at 3 PM. The winner will advance to the Jan. 9 Orange Bowl against Penn State.
“Public safety is of the utmost importance,” Sugar Bowl CEO Jeff Hundley said during a media conference alongside federal, state and local officials, including Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry and New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell. “All parties agree that it is in the best interests of everyone and public safety that we postpone the game.”
The New Orleans victims occurred when Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a 42-year-old American citizen born and raised in Texas, rammed a pickup truck into a crowd of revelers in New Orleans’ famed French Quarter early on New Year’s Day. In addition to the deaths, more than thirty people were injured. The driver was killed during a shootout with police after the attack at about 3:15 a.m. along Bourbon Street near Canal Street, the FBI said.
Police vehicles are seen outside the Louisiana Superdome after Wednesday’s attack
The decision to postpone the match meant that many traveling fans with tickets would not be able to attend. Online ticket prices dropped to less than $25 in some cases as fans with plans to leave Thursday tried to unload them.
“We can’t get any new flights,” said Lisa Borrelli, a 34-year-old Philadelphia resident who came to New Orleans with her fiancé, a 2011 Notre Dame graduate.
Postponing the match “was absolutely the right decision,” she said. “I understand completely.”
She said they paid more than $250 per ticket and hadn’t bothered to offer them for resale yet because the prices were so low.
“Of course we’re disappointed to miss it and lose so much money on it, but in the end it doesn’t matter,” Borrelli said. “We’re fortunate that we’re doing well.”
U.S. Rep. Troy Carter, D-La., said the decision to postpone the game “was not made lightly.”
“It was done with one thing in mind: public safety – ensuring that the citizens and visitors of this great city, not just for this event, but for any event you go to in Louisiana, will be safe,” said Carter. added.