AILSA CHANG, HOST:
We're learning more about some of the victims of the attack. Drew Hawkins of the Gulf States Newsroom reports on how one family has been devastated by their loss.
DREW HAWKINS, BYLINE: Kareem Badawi just finished his first semester at the University of Alabama, where he was studying engineering. His father, Belal Badawi, says he was an 18-year-old full of life.
BELAL BADAWI: He just loved everything. He loved sport and he played baseball, played basketball. He played football.
HAWKINS: Badawi says his son came home to Baton Rouge for the winter break, and he said he wanted to go to New Orleans with a group of friends.
BADAWI: So he said, Dad, I mean, everybody goes to New Orleans, and I would love to go and celebrate the new year over there. I said, OK, go ahead, son. Just be careful, you know?
HAWKINS: When Kareem didn't answer his phone the next morning, his family tracked his location. They saw he wasn't far from where a man drove a white pickup truck into a crowd of people on Bourbon Street. They headed straight to New Orleans and waited hours before the FBI met with them to tell them Kareem had been killed.
BADAWI: And I sent my son to have a new year and a party with his friends and - I don't know, ma'am. I mean, what did my son do to get killed?
HAWKINS: Badawi says his family is struggling to make sense of this. They're Muslim, and they've seen reports connecting the suspect to the terror group ISIS.
BADAWI: Does not represent Islam. Does not represent anything, you know?
HAWKINS: A vigil is set to be held at Kareem's former high school in Baton Rouge tonight.
For NPR News, I'm Drew Hawkins in New Orleans. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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