Families of New Orleans victims search for clues in deadly New Year’s Eve attack

Just hours before the clock struck midnight on New Year’s Eve, Jack Bech called his older brother Martin, an avid outdoorsman and former football star known mostly as “Tiger” to friends and teammates.

Jack, 22, was in Dallas visiting family members, while Tiger, a 28-year-old former Princeton graduate living in New York, was in New Orleans getting ready to ring in the New Year.

“We just thought it would be another conversation,” he told the BBC. “I showed him what we eat, and he showed us what he eats.”

The two brothers never spoke again.

“I hung up and that was the last time I spoke to him,” Jack recalls.

Tiger was among 14 people killed when a gunman plowed through a crowd on Bourbon Street in New Orleans.

The attacker, 42-year-old army veteran Shamsud-Din Jabbar, was killed in a shootout with police after he drove a pickup truck into the crowdaccording to authorities. Although he had posted online videos declaring his allegiance to the Islamic State group before the attack, FBI officials said they believe he acted alone.

While the identities of all the dead have not yet been published, the picture is gradually emerging a group of mostly young peoplemany of whom – like Tiger – were Louisiana natives.

Jack, who remembers his brother as a best friend, role model and inspiration, says the close-knit Bech family will never be the same.

Most of the family is in Lafayette, about 136 miles (218 km) from New Orleans.

“It’s something we’re going to have to deal with. Every time we wake up and every time we go to sleep, it’s going to be something,” he added. “Every holiday there will be an empty place at the table.”

But Tiger said his brother “wouldn’t want us to grieve and mourn.” Instead, he encouraged his family to remember him as a “fighter.”

“He would want us to continue to attack life … he would want us to go and be there for each other,” he said.

“I told my family that instead of seeing him a couple of times a year, he’s going to be with us every moment,” Jack added. “Every time we wake up and go to bed, and we go for a walk, when we’re at work, whatever, he’ll be with us.”

Matthew Tenedario, an audio-visual technician at Caesars’ Superdome in New Orleans, was among the other victims of the early morning attack on January 1.

Tenedorio, who just turned 25 in October, spent the first part of the evening at his brother’s house in Slidell, about 35 minutes from New Orleans.

With him were his father and mother – who had just recovered from cancer.

His cousin Christina Bounds told the BBC that his family “begged” him not to go to New Orleans, fearing the large crowds and potential danger.

Despite their pleas, he went with two friends. When the news got out, one of them eventually got his mother.

“They said they were walking down Bourbon and saw a body fall,” she said, noting they now believe it was a body thrown into the air by the attacker’s truck.

Amid screams and shots, Tenedorio was separated from his friends.

His family says he was shot and is believed to have been killed during a shootout between the gunman and police on Bourbon Street.

The BBC cannot independently verify this statement.

According to Ms Bounds, the family’s tragedy was made more painful by the slow, almost non-existent communication they had with local authorities.

“We couldn’t get any information when my aunt (Tenedorio’s mother, Kathy) showed up at the hospital,” she said. “There was no information from doctors, hospitals or the police. No one.”

“They don’t have the information, and that’s the part that annoys everyone. We don’t even know what happened,” Bounds added. “Did the ambulance take him away? Was he in an ambulance? Did he die instantly?”

Those answers, she added, “will help people accept” what happened.

“But now it’s like a complete shock,” she added. “It’s not a check-in.”

The family has set up a GoFundMe page to raise funds for Tenedario’s funeral – which Ms Bounds said was complicated by his mother’s significant medical bills when she was diagnosed with cancer.

Another of Tenedario’s cousins, Zach Colgan, remembers him as a “goofball” who was quick to joke, cared deeply about animals and was an avid storyteller.

“He cared. He was definitely a people person. A jolly guy,” Mr Colgan told the BBC. “It’s sad that he was taken in an act of terrorism … no family should ever have to bury their son, especially for something so senseless.”

Mr. Colgan, who has experience with law enforcement in Louisiana, says he believes the officers did the best they could in an extremely tense situation with the victims.

“I know it’s chaotic. But part of closure is getting answers. I know my aunt and uncle couldn’t get anything other than ‘yes, Matthew was killed,'” he said.

“It would be good to know a bit more,” added Mr Colgan. “If it was my child, I’d want to know.”

While his family continues to search for answers, Mr Colgan says he hopes the Government and the public will continue to focus on the victims rather than the response of law enforcement or what more could have been done , to prevent an attack.

“I want every one of them to be remembered,” he said. “They didn’t deserve it. No one deserves this.”