U.S. veterans work to make sense of New Year’s Day incidents: It’s ‘doubly tragic’

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Between rows of close-set apartments at a veterans’ community in New Orleans, Jackson M. Smith stands in the grass, introducing some brown-speckled chickens.

Vets who live in this Gentilly development take care of the birds. They cluck peacefully as Smith — a former U.S. Marine Corps officer, and the site’s director — reflects on unsettling New Year’s Day headlines.

In New Orleans, a U.S. Army veteran drove a truck into a crowd on Bourbon Street, killing 14 and injuring dozens, after pledging allegiance to the extremist group ISIS. On the same day in Las Vegas, a U.S. Army officer planned a Tesla explosion later deemed a suicide.

Authorities have not found a connection between the deadly events. But for veterans like Smith, they raise questions as to how to make sense of two tragic incidents involving their own: How did this happen? And, what does it mean, if anything, for us?

Weeks later, Smith has seen online chatter and research papers asking if something is going wrong with veterans. He worries that association with these events could increase stigma, or paint veterans as somehow damaged. 

If people come to that conclusion, “it’s going to make life that much more painful and difficult for [veterans], and in a way that I think is doubly tragic,” he said.

That’s even as veterans who live on-site at the community, called Bastion, relayed their own safety fears.The former service members live just a few miles from tourist areas. Some fear they could be an extremist’s target if another attack were to take place.

“I’ve gotten a late-night call most nights since January 1st from somebody in the community who is up late looking out their window and worried about, ‘Who is that walking down the street? I don’t recognize that car,'” Smith said.

There are more than 15 million living veterans, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. The group reflects an enormous cross-section of the nation, and includes individuals from all walks of life. That means it’s hard to generalize about their needs.

But the twinned events raised concerns about radicalization and added to a long-running national conversation about veterans’ mental health care, as well as pique from some veterans about being lumped in with extremists or unfairly characterized as “crazy.”

Some, like one U.S. Army veteran from the New Orleans area who declined to be named, said there was more compassion in his orbit for Matthew Livelsberger, from the Las Vegas explosion. New Orleans’ attacker Shamsud-din Jabbar, however, deserves “condemnation, not sympathy.”

“He switched sides, and he attacked fellow Americans. So, not cool,” the veteran said.

A U.S. Army spokesperson did not respond to a general request for comment about the New Year’s Day events.

Smith said these incidents could make veterans’ lives harder, as many are challenged by feelings of loneliness and disconnection after their service.

“They come out on the other side to a world that they don’t know how to belong in,” he said. “Every single one of us, when we take the uniform off, struggle with that to one degree or another. I know I did.” 

‘Did we miss something?’

Two men, two incidents, two approaches: a suicide in Las Vegas, and an attack in New Orleans deemed terrorism and seemingly designed to kill as many people as possible.

When retired Air Force Col. Charlton Meginley considered the Bourbon Street tragedy, he came back to the military’s oath — including a promise to defend the Constitution against enemies, “foreign and domestic.” It made what happened in New Orleans “very angering” for him.

“You would never think that a domestic terrorist would come from someone who took that same oath that I did. And I think that that’s what has really troubled me the most,” said Meginley, who now serves as secretary of Louisiana’s Department of Veterans Affairs.

Meginley points out that Jabbar concluded his service years ago, and it’s unclear how connected he was to veterans’ resources. But he sees Livelsberger’s situation as concerning, and raises questions about who was tracking a “vulnerable soldier.”

“Those are questions that I think ultimately will have to be asked to see, hey, did we miss something?” Meginley said. “And should we have caught the warning signs earlier?”

Meginley said resources are plentiful for Louisiana veterans, including a local crisis line and financial assistance programs.

He urges veterans to do “buddy checks” and check on friends who may be more vulnerable.

Lexi Loudon, a Louisiana-based provisional therapist who works with the military community, said the reaction to the events in her circles has been muted, possibly because people in that world tend not to be as shocked by violence.

That’s because while not everyone in the community has mental health needs, every service member or veteran who has tried to seek care has a story about problems with access, she explains. 

While that’s improved in recent years, Loudon said they’re still catching up from a system that once lagged. Efforts like the Brandon Act have aimed to remedy that situation, and newly confirmed VA secretary Doug Collins has promised to improve care for service members, while trimming regulations.

Loudon, who is also a military spouse, describes a general distancing from the New Year’s Day events, especially the Bourbon Street attack — an uncharacteristic shift from typical in-group identification between veterans and other service members.

“Individuals don’t have the easiest time putting themselves in the shoes of someone who’s going to commit mass atrocity,” she said.

Over in Texas, U.S. Army veteran Gary Walp said there is a “tragic history” of periodic events where veterans harmed others. That includes long-ago events such as the University of Texas tower shooting and more recent incidents such as a mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine, in 2023.

Walp advocates for veterans caught up in the justice system. He said these types of incidents highlight the need for improved access to specialty courts that can step in if a veteran is arrested for lower-level crimes and connect them with treatment and resources. 

Solutions to ‘endemic loneliness’

Back at Bastion, the veterans community in New Orleans, Smith connects the New Year’s Day events to a broader feeling of fragmentation in society.

He sees parallels to problems like persistent drug overdoses or recurring school shootings.

It’s “this endemic loneliness and disconnection that seems to be happening to everybody everywhere,” he said.

That hurts veterans — and everyone else. It is also what this community is trying to solve with interconnected living.

In addition to caring for chickens, veterans who live at the site tend plants like beans, work on art projects, or end up in “little de facto sewing circles” in front of their apartments or along the long ramps that stretch from their doors.

Smith said that cultivates an atmosphere of neighborliness, where people notice what’s normal for one another and flag when someone is struggling.

During a reporter’s visit, one resident whizzes past in a motorized wheelchair after Smith points out staff members who are setting up a lunchtime activity of pickling jalapenos and beets, in a homey room that hums with activity.

Smith said some aspects of the New Year’s Day events are likely to remain a mystery.

“With respect to those two individuals and what specifically got them to this terribly dark place to do these terribly dark things, we will never know that full picture, right?” he said.

“They’re not here anymore for us to ask or to try and understand.”

This story was produced by the Gulf States Newsroom, a collaboration between Mississippi Public Broadcasting, WBHM in Alabama, WWNO and WRKF in Louisiana and NPR.