Alexis Scott-Windham, Brandon Whitsett and a group of other Mobile residents, all in their 20s, made their way to Bourbon Street to find something to eat, use a bathroom, and start ending their New Year’s Eve fun.

“The night was going really well,” said Scott-Windham, 23, a 2019 graduate from Mattie T. Blount High School in Mobile.

“We saw a group of other Mobile people there, chilling and having a good time. We went into a food place, and it was closing. We were talking before we left and that’s when we heard a noise.”

Scott-Windham had no idea she and her friends were about to narrowly escape death in a terror attack that left 15 dead, 35 injured and shocked the nation as 2025 began.

Pictures shared to AL.com showed the group walking down the street near Bourbon Heat, a popular dance club near Bourbon and Orleans streets – several blocks away from where a deadly terror attack occurred near Bourbon and Iberville.

She described the noise she heard during the tragedy as a “bump, bump, bump.”

“He was halfway on the sidewalk and the street,” Scott-Windham said of the driver identified as Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42.

“By the time we looked up, we heard someone shout, ‘Move!’ He came so fast. I stepped up with my left foot. He hit me on the right foot.”

She added, “I thought he was drunk, driving down the street. When I looked up, he was coming so fast. I didn’t realize it was that fast. Brandon was on the side of me. I looked to the left, and Brandon was to the right of me.”

Scott-Windham said she was shot in the ankle.

She recalls limping off Bourbon Street, but noticed her foot “was leaking” from what she described as a bullet wound. All around, she recalls, “bodies were everywhere.”

“The EMS, they were taking too long,” Scott-Windham said, adding that she was given a ride to a hospital from a man who was there helping to take others to local emergency rooms.

“I’m thankful for him,” she said about the Good Samaritan.

“He was picking up (victims) who were more complicated (with worse injuries). I don’t know anything about him, but he said ‘I can get you (to the hospital).’”

“He picked me up and put me in the truck and rushed me to the hospital,” Scott-Windam said.

She was taken to University Medical Center in New Orleans where she spent Wednesday and was treated for injuries until she was released to her mother.

“Everyone was calling my phone but I couldn’t text back (for hours) to my other friends to let them know we were OK,” she said.

Whitsett, she said, remains in New Orleans and is in stable condition at Touro Hospital. He suffered injuries when he was struck by the pickup truck, she said.

Whitsett, a 2022 alumni of Vigor, posted on Facebook Wednesday saying, “Forever thank god that could of been worse.” Whitsett is currently recovering in a New Orleans hospital according to a post from his mother, Bernadette Whitsett.

Bernadette thanked everyone for their support for her son as he recovers from the terror attack that killed at least 15 people and injured 35.

“I would like to thank everyone for your prayers, phone calls, text messages,” Bernadette said. “My son is recovering in the hospital in New Orleans, please continue to pray for him. Thank you all so very much, l really appreciate all the love and support shown.”

Scott-Windam said she has to go back to the hospital in two weeks to have her fracture re-examined. In the meantime, she’s on bed rest and off work from her job at the Amazon facility in Mobile.

The FBI said Jabbar drove a pickup truck with an Islamic State flag around a police blockade and slammed into revelers before being shot dead by police.

The FBI believes Jabbar, a U.S. born citizen and Army Veteran, acted alone in an “act of terrorism.”

Christopher Raia, deputy assistant director of the FBI’s counterterrorism division, said Thursday that the evidence now shows that Jabbar was solely responsible for the attack and professed allegiance to the Islamic State.

Multiple improvised explosive devices were found by investigators according to a Louisiana State Police intelligence bulletin obtained by The Associated Press.

Kareem Badawi, a University of Alabama freshman and 2024 graduate of the Episcopal School of Baton Rouge, was one of the people killed in the attack.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.