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A second Mississippi victim is identified in New Orleans terror attack

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mississippitoday.org – Associated Press – 2025-01-02 11:56:00

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — An 18-year-old girl dreaming of becoming a nurse, a single mother, a father of two and a former Princeton football star suffered fatal injuries when the driver of a white pickup truck sped down Bourbon Street, packed with holiday revelers.

Officials have not yet released the names of the 14 people killed in the New Orleans New Year’s Day truck attack, but their families and friends have started sharing their stories. New Orleans Coroner Dr. Dwight McKenna said in a statement late Wednesday that they will release the names of the dead once autopsies are complete and they’ve talked with the next of kin. About 30 people were injured.

Matthew Tenedorio

The parents of Matthew Tenedorio, a native of Pearl River County, Mississippi, told NBC News that their son was one of the people killed in the attack.

“He was 25 years old. He was just starting life. He had the job of his dreams,” Cathy Tenedorio said. “It’s just very sad.”

A GoFundMe page created by a cousin says he was an audiovisual technician at the Superdome.

“He was a wonderful kid,” Louis Tenedorio added. “He loved people. He loved animals. He always had a smile. So many friends. He had so many friends.”

Cathy Tenedorio said she had spent New Year’s Eve with Matthew and another one of her sons.

“We had dinner and we did fireworks outside, and just laughing and hugging each other and telling each other we loved each other,” she said. She added that they had tried to dissuade him from going into the city.

“They don’t think about risk,” she said.

Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves tweeted his condolences to Tenedorio’s family on Thursday.

Nikyra Dedeaux

Zion Parsons of Gulfport, Mississippi, had been celebrating New Year’s Eve at his first night on Bourbon Street when a vehicle appeared and plowed into his friend, 18-year-old Nikyra Dedeaux, who he said had dreamed of becoming a nurse.

“A truck hit the corner and comes barreling through throwing people like in a movie scene, throwing people into the air,” Parsons, 18, told The Associated Press. “It hit her and flung her like at least 30 feet and I was just lucky to be alive.”

READ MORE: Mississippi teen among those killed in suspected terrorist attack in New Orleans

As the crowd scattered in the chaos he ran through a gruesome aftermath of bleeding and maimed victims, hearing gunshots and explosive sounds.

“Bodies, bodies all up and down the street, everybody screaming and hollering” Parsons said. “People crying on the floor, like brain matter all over the ground. It was just insane, like the closest thing to a war zone that I’ve ever seen.”

Dedeaux was a responsible daughter — shorter than all her siblings but the one who helped take care of everyone, Parsons said. Dedeaux had a job at a hospital and was set to start college and begin working towards her goal of becoming a registered nurse.

“She had her mindset — she didn’t have everything figured out but she had the plan laid down,” Parsons said.

Gov. Reeves tweeted his condolences to Dedeaux’s family on Thursday.

Reggie Hunter

A 37-year-old father of two from Baton Rouge, Reggie Hunter had just left work and headed to celebrate New Year’s with a cousin when the attack happened, his first cousin Shirell Jackson told Nola.com.

Hunter died and his cousin was injured, Jackson said.

Tiger Bech

A former high school and college football player from Louisiana was among those who died, according to an education official.

Tiger Bech, 27, died late Wednesday morning at a New Orleans hospital, according to local media outlets citing Kim Broussard, the athletic director at St. Thomas More Catholic High School in Lafayette. Bech attended the high school, where he played wide receiver, quarterback, punt returner and defensive back, NOLA.com reported.

Bech played football at Princeton University before graduating in 2021. Most recently he was working as an investment trader at a New York brokerage firm.

Marty Cannon, STM principal and former Bech coach, said he was an incredibly talented football player, but also charismatic and intelligent. After graduating from Princeton and working in the city, he regularly returned to visit his tight-knit family, close friends and people at the school. He was home over Christmas.

“We live in a relatively small community here where not a lot of people leave but many do,” Cannon said. “I’m not surprised at all that Tiger could take off from south Louisiana and go off and get an amazing education at a place like Princeton and then lock himself into a community up there and just flourish. He’s that kind of guy.”

Princeton football coach Bob Surace said Wednesday that he had been texting with Bech’s father, sharing memories of the player, who was a school kick returner and receiver from 2017 to 2019. He earned All-Ivy League honors as a returner.

“He might be the first Tiger to ever play for us, and that nickname kind of described him as a competitor,” Surace told ESPN. The school’s nickname is the Tigers. “He was somebody that somehow, like in the key moments, just excelled and was full of energy, full of life.”

Bech has been working at Seaport Global, where company spokesperson Lisa Lieberman could not confirm his death. But she told The Associated Press that “he was extremely well regarded by everybody who knew him.”

Bech’s younger brother, Jack, is a top wide receiver at Texas Christian University.

In a response to a KLFY-TV report posted on X about Tiger Bech’s death, a post from an account for a Jack Bech on the social media site said: “Love you always brother ! You inspired me everyday now you get to be with me in every moment. I got this family T, don’t worry. This is for us.”

Nicole Perez

Nicole Perez was a single mother to a 4-year-old son working hard to make life better for her family when she was killed, according to her employer.

Perez, who was in her late 20s, was recently promoted to manager at Kimmy’s Deli in Metairie, Louisiana, and “was really excited about it,” deli owner Kimberly Usher said in a phone interview with AP. Usher confirmed Perez’s death through her sister, who also works for her.

Usher said Perez would walk in the morning to the deli, which opened at breakfast time, and would ask lots of questions about the business side of the operations. She also was permitted to bring her son, Melo, to work, where during breaks she taught him basic learning skills.

“She was a really good mom,” said Usher, who started a GoFundMe account to cover Perez’s burial costs and to help with expenses for her son that “he will need to transition into a new living situation,” the donation request says.

Injured in the Attack

Heaven Sensky-Kirsch said her father, Jeremi Sensky, endured 10 hours of surgery for injuries that included two broken legs. He was taken off a ventilator Thursday.

Jeremi Sensky was ejected from the wheelchair he has used since a 1999 car accident and had bruises to his face and head, Sensky-Kirsch said in a phone interview from a hospital intensive care unit.

“He’s talking right now,” Sensky-Kirsch said late Thursday morning.

Sensky, 51, who works in the family’s tree service business, had driven from his home in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, to New Orleans to celebrate the holiday.

He and his wife, his daughter, his son-in-law and two friends stopped for a few days in Nashville before arriving in New Orleans, a place they just always wanted to visit.

Before the attack, Sensky and the two friends had been having pizza, his daughter said. Sensky left them to return to his hotel on Canal Street because he felt cold, she said.

Sensky-Kirsch said others could see the attacker coming and were able to run out of the way, but her father “was stuck on the road.” His wheelchair can been seen in some images lodged against a crane.

When he didn’t return to the hotel, they went to look for him, she said.

“We thought he was dead,” Sensky-Kirsch said. “We can’t believe he’s alive.”

Also injured:

— University of Georgia President Jere W. Morehead said on “X” that a student was critically injured in the attack and is receiving medical treatment. He did not name the student.

— The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on “X” that two Israeli citizens were injured in the attack.

— University of Mississippi Chancellor Glenn Boyce said Thursday that one of the university’s students was critically injured in New Orleans. Boyce did not identify the student.


Jack Brook in New Orleans, Gary Robertson in Raleigh, North Carolina, Emily Wagster Pettus in Jackson, Mississippi, Travis Loller in Nashville and Martha Bellisle in Seattle contributed to this report.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Mississippi Today

Navy destroyer named after former Mississippi Gov. Ray Mabus

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mississippitoday.org – Bobby Harrison – 2025-01-16 11:42:00

A new guided missile Navy destroyer ship will be named in honor of former Mississippi governor and U.S. Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus.

Current Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro made the announcement this week at the Surface Navy Association’s 37th National Symposium in Arlington, Virginia.

The USS Ray Mabus will be built at Pascagoula’s Ingalls Shipbuilding, and Mabus’ daughter Liz Mabus will sponsor the ship.

“I am honored to announce four new ships which represent the future of our fleet,” Del Toro said in a news release.

Mabus served as Mississippi’s governor from 1988 until 1992 and was 39 years old when first elected. Before then, he was the state auditor. He later became the nation’s secretary of the Navy from 2009 until 2017, making him the longest serving Navy secretary since World War I.

Mabus was a surface warfare officer on the USS Little Rock in the early 1970s. He was later the ambassador to Saudi Arabia under President Bill Clinton.

“Serving my country in uniform as a young LTJG aboard a guided missile cruiser and then, decades later, leading our naval services are the greatest privileges and most consequential times of my life,” Mabus, an Ackerman native, said in a news release. “The highest honor of my life is to know that sailors will defend our country and represent our values around the world for years aboard a ship bearing my name. That LTJG would never have imagined and this former SECNAV could not be more thankful, more honored, or more moved.”

According to the news release, during Mabus’s tenure as secretary, “the Navy went from building fewer than five ships per year to having more than 70 under contract. He championed the ‘21st Century Sailor and Marine’ initiative to build and maintain the most resilient and ready force possible. He directed the Navy and Marine Corps to change the way they use, produce, and acquire energy, setting an aggressive goal of relying on alternative sources for at least 50% of their energy by 2020.”

Mabus also, at the direction President Barack Obama, developed the plan, the bulk of which was passed by Congress, to restore the Gulf of Mexico after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion and massive oil spill.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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Mississippi Today

NAACP legislative redistricting proposal pits two pairs of senators against each other

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mississippitoday.org – Taylor Vance – 2025-01-16 09:28:00

The Mississippi chapter of the ACLU has submitted a proposal to redraw the state’s legislative districts that creates two new majority-Black Senate districts and pits two pairs of incumbent senators against one another. 

The plan, submitted on behalf of Black residents and the state branch of the NAACP, creates a new majority-Black Senate district in north Mississippi’s DeSoto County and in south Mississippi’s Hattiesburg area. 

“Any proposed maps that attempt to meet the court order by diluting or undermining existing Black-majority voting districts in other parts of the state will fail the requirements set by the court and federal law,” Mississippi ACLU Director Jarvis Dortch said in a statement. 

The plan tweaks the boundaries of the existing 52 Senate districts. 

To accommodate new majority-Black districts, the plan places Republican Sens. Kevin Blackwell and David Parker, both of DeSoto County, in the same district. The same scenario would happen to Republican Sens. John Polk and Chris Johnson of Hattiesburg. 

Neither the Senate nor the House has released a redistricting proposal, and the federal courts have not yet ruled on a submitted plan. 

Senate Rules Committee Chairman Dean Kirby, a Republican from Pearl, said on Mississippi Today’s “The Other Side” podcast that Senate leaders were “very close” to releasing a redistricting plan.  

For the House, the ACLU’s plan would make the District 22 seat in Chickasaw County currently held by Republican Rep. Jon Lancaster of Houston, who is white, a majority-Black voter district. This portion of the plan does not put any incumbents against each other. 

House Speaker Jason White, a Republican from West, said he did not know when the House leadership planned to release its redistricting plan but that it was one of his priorities and he plans to “get it done.” 

The ACLU proposal stems from a successful legal challenge the organization filed against state officials that argued the legislative districts drawn in 2022 by the state Legislature diluted Black voting strength. 

LISTEN: Podcast: ‘Deja vu all over again’: Senate President Protem Dean Kirby outlines 2025 issues

A federal three-judge panel agreed, ordering the state to create more majority-Black districts and conduct special elections within the impacted districts this year. 

Only a couple of legislative districts will significantly change, but the Legislature will also have to tweak many districts to accommodate new maps. State officials in court filings have argued that the redrawing would affect a quarter of the state’s 174 legislative districts.

While the court ultimately placed the burden on the Legislature for creating a new map that satisfies federal voting laws, it ordered that the ACLU and the plaintiffs should be ready with an alternative plan if they object to the state’s plan that must be adopted by the conclusion of the 2025 session, which ends in the spring.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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Mississippi Today

On this day in 1959

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mississippitoday.org – Jerry Mitchell – 2025-01-16 07:00:00

Jan. 16, 1959

Credit: Wikipedia

The Minneapolis Lakers met the Cincinnati Royals in an NBA game before a crowd in Charleston, West Virginia. Local fans were eager to see their hometown basketball hero, “Hot Rod” Hundley, play alongside rookie phenom Elgin Baylor, but Baylor sat out to protest racism he and other Black players had experienced the night before. 

“The first thing I said was I was really hurt by that,” he recalled. “I thought about it and I said, ‘I’m not going out there. We’re not like animals in the circus or something and then go out there and put a show on for them.’” 

After arriving in Charleston, a local hotel had denied rooms to him and the two other Black players, Boo Ellis and Ed Fleming. Hundley exploded, telling a hotel official, “You listen to me! You know who this is? Now find us some rooms! All of us!” The official refused, and the Lakers relocated elsewhere. 

The indignities didn’t end there. When the team tried to eat at a local restaurant, they refused to serve the Black players, too. Upset by Baylor’s absence at the game, a local promoter urged Maurice Podoloff, the president of the NBA, to discipline Baylor, calling the player’s absence from the lineup “most embarrassing to us.” 

The NBA president responded, “I would find it hard to punish a man for trying to protect his self-respect and dignity.’’ 

Baylor became one of the best basketball players of all time, a talented NBA executive and an ambassador for the sport. But it wouldn’t be his last encounter with racism. That came when he worked with Donald Sterling, then team owner of the LA Clippers. 

After audio tapes revealed his racism, Sterling was banned from the league. Three years before Baylor’s death in 2021, the Lakers unveiled a statue of him outside the arena, and he published a book about his life in basketball called “Hang Time.”

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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