Standing motionless, with a hand covering her mouth, a woman stares at the lifeless body at her feet as a security guard from a nearby bar attempts to drag her away.
But she refuses to leave, alone and frozen by the horror in Bourbon Street, New Orleans.
Moments earlier, the now empty road where she stands, the hub of the city’s legendary bar scene, had been packed with partygoers celebrating the new year.
For many, spending New Year’s Eve in the historic city’s French Quarter, which dates back to 1718, would have been a rare experience.
But at around 3.15am, a man driving a white Ford pickup truck drove around barriers erected to protect the public, put his foot down and rammed into the crowd. At least 15 people were killed, and 35 injured. The victims were mostly locals rather than tourists, officials said.
After speeding down the one-way street, the vehicle crashed outside the four-star Royal Sonesta Hotel, between Bienville and Conti Streets, its hood crumpled.
Photos showed what looked like a black cloth or flag, which authorities believe may have been linked to Islamic State, the terror group known for its opposition to alcohol, dancing and hedonism of any kind.
In the immediate aftermath, Jimmy Cothran described how moments earlier he had been walking down Bourbon Street towards Canal Street when he noticed “a lot of commotion” and slipped into a nearby nightclub.
When a group of women ran inside and started hiding under tables, he initially thought they were being chased or shot at, and went up to the nightclub’s balcony to see what was happening.
Mr Cothran, from New Orleans, told NBC News he saw the bodies of “horribly disfigured” victims strewn across the street. Two looked “at least alive” but others were “graphically deceased”. One victim, he said, had visible tyre tracks on his body.
“It just kept going,” he said. “Like, every eye shot, body, body, body, body.”
Whit Davis, 22, was in a nearby bar in the city’s popular French Quarter as the attack happened.
“Never seen a scene like what I just saw on Bourbon Street,” he wrote on social media. “If me and my friends had left the bar 10 minutes before we did, who knows if we’d be alive right now?”
Mr Davis, from Shreveport, Louisiana, told the BBC: “We had been on and around Bourbon Street since the beginning of the evening. When we were in the bar, we didn’t hear shooting or crashes because the music was so loud.”
People then began hiding under tables as though it was “an active shooter drill”, he said.
When he and his friends were allowed to leave the bar, they “were walking past dead and injured all over the street”.
Kevin Garcia, 22, told CNN: “All I seen was a truck slamming into everyone on the left side of Bourbon sidewalk. A body came flying at me.” He added that he also heard gunshots.
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Zion Parsons, 18, told CNN he had gone to the French Quarter to celebrate New Year’s Eve and was now desperately trying to reach a friend who was seriously wounded in the attack.
“It was just like a movie. That’s the only way I can explain it,” he said of the moment the pick-up raced towards him through the pedestrian-only area.
“There were bodies and blood and all the trash,” he said. “The best way I can describe it is truly a war zone.”
Kimberly Stricklin and her husband Michael were visiting from Mobile, Alabama, and told The New York Times that they saw the truck accelerating towards Bourbon Street.
“We heard him punch the gas and then the impact and then the screams,” she said. “It just took a moment to register, it was just so frightening – it was like something out of a horror movie.”
Mrs Stricklin said she “can’t get over” the screams of one young victim.
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Despite initially saying that Wednesday’s horrific attack was “not a terrorist event”, contradicting LaToya Cantrell, the mayor of New Orleans, the FBI later said it was investigating it as “an act of terrorism”.
The driver, Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar, 42, understood to have been wearing a helmet and body armour, fired shots and struck two police officers before being killed in a shoot-out.
Officials found what appeared to be improvised explosive devices in the truck and were trying to determine whether they were “viable”.
On Wednesday, officials were trying to work out whether the suspect had used a long-gun rifle to fire into the crowd while he was driving.
“This man was trying to run over as many people as he possibly could,” Anne Kirkpatrick, the New Orleans Police Department superintendent, said.
“Because of the intentional mindset of this perpetrator who went around our barricades in order to conduct this, he was hell-bent on creating the carnage and the damage that he did.”
Mr Cothran criticised the lack of barricades to stop vehicles from being able to access the busy area.
US media reported that city authorities had removed the steel barricades that would normally be placed to block traffic around the area to be renovated, replacing them with alternative measures.
“We couldn’t understand why no one was helping. I’m trained and certified, and they would not let us out. We just stood by and watched for several moments,” he said.
Hours after the attack, several coroners’ office vans were parked on the corner of Bourbon and Canal streets, cordoned off by police tape. Crowds of dazed tourists stood around, some trying to navigate their luggage through the labyrinth of blockades.
“We looked out our front door and saw caution tape and dead silence and it’s eerie,” said Tessa Cundiff, an Indiana native who moved to the French Quarter a few years ago. “This is not what we fell in love with, it’s sad.”
Elsewhere, life went on as normal in the city known to some for a motto that translates to “let the good times roll”.
Close to where the truck came to rest, some people were talking about the attack, while others talked football after the Sugar Bowl in the city was postponed.
At a cafe a block away, people crowded in for breakfast as upbeat pop music played. Two blocks away, people drank at a bar, seemingly as if nothing happened.
