In shock and sorrow, South MS grieves locals killed during terror on Bourbon Street

The girl they loved was sweet and joyful.

She was smart, too, a recent high school graduate who wanted to find her own apartment, go to school and become a nurse. Everyone liked her, the people who knew her said. She made them happy.

Now they are grieving, angry and do not understand. It does not feel real, they said, that Ni’Kyra Cheyenne Dedeaux happened to run the wrong way when a man plowed a pickup truck through crowded Bourbon Street and killed 14 people. Ni’Kyra was one of them. So was Matthew Tenedorio, a 25-year-old who graduated from Pearl River Central.

“This is not happening,” Zion Parsons, a friend of Ni’Kyra’s, told himself over and over as he ran from her body after the man in the truck started shooting.

“He didn’t deserve this,” Christina Bounds said of Tenedorio, her cousin. “They were going to one more bar.”

Tenedorio and Dedeaux’s deaths made the tragedy even tougher on the Mississippi Coast, which watched in shock on Wednesday as the terrible news rolled in. The suspect, 42-year-old Shamsud-Din Jabbar, was wearing military gear. The FBI called his actions premeditated terrorism inspired by ISIS. Surveillance footage showed him planting two homemade bombs.

The attack killed Tenedorio and Dedeaux, and also a Baton Rouge dad, a Princeton University athlete, a Louisiana deli manager and a University of Alabama fraternity member. It injured more than a dozen, including an Ole Miss student. The names of all who died are still unknown.

Friends honor Gulfport teen

Parsons grew close with Dedeaux after they met at a pool party last year. She was a bubbly “ball of sunshine,” he said, who worked at a hospital and wanted to be a travel nurse. Family and friends called her Biscuit.

Parsons and Dedeaux watched movies together, played charades and went to the mall to eat. She had good taste in music. The song “All for Me” by Mariah the Scientist reminds Parsons of her.

“She was so cool,” he said. “There’s nobody else like her.”

Dante Reed met Dedeaux in their 7th grade English class, first period. He said he kept to himself and no one in the class paid him much mind — except for Ni’Kyra.

She would smile and laugh and walk up to him, Reed said, then sit at his desk and start talking. He described Dedeaux as strong and fierce, “a light in everybody’s tunnel.” She stood up for him when other students bothered him. She was his first homecoming date. He was no dancer, but she convinced him. Her kindness, Reed said, “made me feel seen.”

They graduated last year from Harrison Central High School.

“She always supported me,” Reed said. “She’s a really good kid.”

Grief and chaos

Reed’s phone started ringing at 3:50 a.m. A cousin was calling and said Dedeaux was in an accident. No one could find her. There was word of a shooting and a man in a white pickup truck.

Tenedorio, who also grew up in Slidell, was in the street, too. Friends later told his family they were walking when a body fell above them, Bounds said. Tenedorio went to help. The suspect started shooting.

Chaniece Parsons, Zion’s mother, did not know he was in New Orleans — he and his friends snuck out. She called and called him Wednesday morning, with no answer. She called the police. Finally, her heart racing, she saw a newspaper story: Her son was giving interviews. He was alive.

“Thank God,” she said.

Chaniece Parsons is now trying to afford counseling for her son, who she said witnessed horrors no one ever should. Their family is grieving for Dedeaux, who was just feet from Parsons when the truck flew through.

“I just want to see my baby,” Ni’Kyra’s mother, Melissa Dedeaux, told the Times-Picayune in New Orleans. “She was the sweetest person. She would give you anything, anything.”

She posted a plea on Facebook.

“When your parents say don’t go anywhere please listen to them,” Melissa Dedeaux wrote. “I lost my baby.”

Search for answers

The questions are troubling loved ones even through pain.

Why, Zion Parsons wants to know, did nothing stop the truck before it crept around a police car, over the sidewalk and began its surge of terror?

The carnage brought chaos to New Orleans, where authorities are pledging resilience and strength as they begin a long investigation and work to carefully identify the dead. Leaders promised to fix the problem troubling Parsons but conceded no barriers beyond patrol cars were blocking Bourbon Street before the attack. They also praised two police officers who were shot but returned the man’s fire and killed him, which stopped the devastation from getting any worse.

Tenedorio’s family knows nothing about their son’s death except that he is believed to have been hit by a bullet, Bounds said. She said his shaken mother arrived at a New Orleans hospital and was greeted by only the coroner and a condolence card.

“She has so many questions,” Bounds said, about her son and everything else.

How to help

The city of New Orleans and the Greater New Orleans Foundation have created the New Orleans New Year’s Day Tragedy Fund to help victims of families and people who were injured or impacted by the attack.

The United Way of Southeast Louisiana has also started a United for New Orleans Relief Fund to support victims and families by covering medical expenses, funeral costs, trauma counseling and more.

Matthew Tenedorio’s family created a GoFundMe to cover his funeral costs.

Chaniece Parsons started a GoFundMe for her son so the family can afford his counseling after he witnessed the death of a friend in the Bourbon Street attack.

Melissa Dedeaux said on Facebook that her family is not accepting donations because they have already received an outpouring of help.

This story was originally published January 3, 2025 at 10:28 AM.