New Orleans Attack Survivor Recalls Being Flung To Ground, Gunfire

“I was screaming and finally someone came over to me and they said, 'Listen, I know you’re hurt, but you’re alive. You’re alive,'” he recalled from a hospital.

One minute, Jeremi Sensky was returning to his hotel on New Orleans’ iconic Bourbon Street. The next, he was flung face-first to the ground with the sound of gunfire around him.

“It’s really weird but, because there were so many people in one place, it went through my mind that it could happen,” he told NBC of the New Year’s Day attack that left 15 people dead and dozens more wounded after a pickup truck drove into a crowd.

Speaking with NBC from a hospital with two broken legs, Sensky said he never saw the pickup truck coming. He was preparing to reunite with his friends and call it a night when he heard “a massive noise,” making him think something had fallen.

He said he still doesn’t know whether the truck, which plowed into dozens of people at a high rate of speed, hit him. All he remembers is being thrown facedown on the ground and seeing his wheelchair, which he’s used for years due to a prior paralyzation, smashed to pieces around him.

Then there was the terrifying sound of gunfire, he said. Police said the suspect engaged in a shootout with officers moments after crashing his truck, which Sensky said came to a rest near him.