Just hours before the clock struck midnight on New Year’s Eve, Jack Bech got a call from his brother, Martin. Known as “Tiger” by friends and teammates.
Jake, 22, is visiting family in Dallas, while Tiger, a 28-year-old former Princeton University alumnus who lives in New York, is in New Orleans preparing to celebrate the New Year.
“We just thought it would be another conversation,” he told the BBC. “I’m showing him what we’re eating, and he’s showing us what he’s eating.”
The two brothers never spoke again.
“I hung up the phone and that was the last time I spoke to him,” Jack recalled.
Tiger was one of 14 people killed when an attacker plowed into a crowd on Bourbon Street in New Orleans.
The attacker, 42-year-old veteran Shamsud-Din Jabbar, was shot dead in a shootout with police. Driving a pickup truck into a crowdaccording to authorities. Although he posted a video online before the attack declaring allegiance to the Islamic State group, FBI officials said they believed he acted alone.
Although the identities of all the victims have not yet been released, an image is slowly emerging A group of mainly young peoplemany of whom – like Tiger – are Louisiana natives.
Jack, who considers his brother his best friend, role model and inspiration, said the close-knit Bech family will never be the same.
Most family members live in the town of Lafayette, about 136 miles (218 kilometers) from New Orleans.
“This is something we have to deal with. Every time we wake up, every time we go to sleep, there’s something going on,” he added. “Every holiday, there’s an empty seat at the table.”
But Tiger said his brother “didn’t want us to grieve and mourn”. Instead, he encouraged his family to remember him as “a warrior.”
“He wants us to continue attacking life… He wants us to support each other,” he said.
“I told my family that instead of seeing him a few times a year, he would be with us every moment,” Jack added. “Every time we get up, sleep, walk, work, do anything, he is with us.”
Other victims of the early morning attack on Jan. 1 included Matthew Tenedorio, an audio-visual technician at the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans.
Tenedorio, who turned 25 in October, had spent the earlier part of the evening at his brother’s home in Slidell, about 35 minutes outside of New Orleans.
With him were his father and mother – who were recovering from cancer.
His cousin Christina Bonds told the BBC that his family “begged” him not to enter New Orleans for fear of large crowds and potential danger.
Despite their pleas, he went with two friends. When word got out, his mother eventually tracked down one of them.
“They said they were walking along Bourbon Avenue and saw a body fall,” she said, noting that they now believe it was the body thrown into the air by the attacker’s truck.
Amid screams and gunfire, Tenedorio became separated from his friends.
His family said he was shot and believed he was killed during a shootout between attackers and police on Bourbon Street.
The BBC could not independently verify the claim.
Ms Bonds said the family’s tragedy was made all the more painful by the slow and almost non-existent communication they had with local authorities.
“Be my aunt [Tenedorio’s mother, Cathy] Show up at the hospital,” she said. “There has been no information from doctors, hospitals or police. No one.
“They had zero information, and that’s the part that pissed everyone off. We didn’t even know what was going on,” Bonds added. “Did he be taken away by emergency personnel? Was he in an ambulance? Did he die immediately?”
She added that the answers would “help people come to terms with” what happened.
“But now it feels like complete shock,” she added. “This is not registration.”
The family has created a GoFundMe page to raise money for Tenedorio’s funeral.
Tenedorio’s other cousin, Zach Colgan, remembers him as a “goofball” who was easy to joke with, cared deeply about animals and was a keen storyteller.
“He cared. He was definitely a people person. A carefree person,” Mr Colgan told the BBC. “Sadly, a terrorist attack took his life… No family should have to bury their son, especially after something so senseless happened.”
Mr. Cogan, who has experience with law enforcement in Louisiana, said he believed officers did the best they could in an extremely stressful casualty situation.
“I know it’s confusing. But part of closure is getting answers. I know my aunt and uncle are going to get nothing but ‘yes – Matthew was killed,'” he said.
“It would be nice to know more,” Mr. Colgan added. “If it were my child, I would want to know.”
While his family continues to search for answers, Colgan said he hopes government and public attention continues to be focused on the victims, rather than the law enforcement response or other steps that could have been taken to prevent the attacks.
“I want every one of them to be remembered,” he said. “They don’t deserve this. No one deserves this.”