Body camera footage released on Friday shows that the suspect in the New Year's Day attack in New Orleans fired the first shots at officers who had surrounded his truck just after the incident, NOLA.com reports.
The footage shows three New Orleans Police officers standing around a white Ford F-150, the truck driven by Shamsud-Din Jabbar and used to run down more than a dozen people before he crashed into a crane on Bourbon Street at about 3:15 a.m. on New Year's Day.
In the video the officer wearing the body camera that produced the footage approaches the truck's door, which was opened prior to the start of the video; a flash of light comes from inside the truck's cab; and gunshots can be heard in the video. Police have not said whether Jabbar fired more than one shot, but officers did return fire, killing the suspect.
New Orleans Police Department Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick said during a press conference that the officers "killed the terrorist. ... They are national heroes."
She added, "Officers are trained for shoot scenarios like that — they're highly trained, and that's what you saw. These are split-second decisions."
Kirkpatrick declined to take questions about the security measures put in place before the event, including the number of officers deployed to the area that night, but she noted that the department will release additional body cam footage eventually.
"I will answer any and all questions through the investigations and then the results of that will be made public," she said.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.