Just hours before the clock struck midnight on New Year's Eve, Jack Bech got on the phone with his older brother Martin, an avid outdoorsman and former football star known to friends and teammates as “Tiger.”
Jack, 22, was in Dallas with family members, while Tiger, a 28-year-old former Princeton graduate who lived in New York, was in New Orleans preparing to ring in the New Year.
“We just thought it would be another conversation,” he told the BBC. “I would show him what we were eating and he would show us what he was eating.
The two brothers would never speak again.
“I hung up the phone and that was the last time I spoke to him,” Jack recalled.
Tiger was among 14 people killed when a gunman plowed into a crowd on Bourbon Street in New Orleans.
The attacker, 42-year-old army veteran Shamsud-Din Jabbar, was killed in a shootout with police after drove a pickup truck into the crowdaccording to authorities. Although he posted videos online professing allegiance to the Islamic State group before the attack, FBI officials said they believe he acted alone.
Although the identities of all the victims have not yet been made public, a picture is slowly emerging from a group of mostly young peoplemany of whom—like Tiger—were Louisiana natives.
Jack, who remembers his brother as his best friend, role model and inspiration, says the close-knit Bech family will never be the same.
Most of the family is in the town of Lafayette, about 136 miles (218 km) from New Orleans.
“It's something we're going to have to deal with. Every time we wake up and every time we go to sleep, it's going to be something,” he added. “At every feast there will be an empty seat at the table.”
But Tiger said his brother “wouldn't want us to mourn and mourn”. Instead, he encouraged his family to remember him as a “fighter.”
“He would want us to keep attacking life … he would want us to go and be there for each other,” he said.
“I told my family that instead of seeing him twice a year, he would be with us every moment,” added Jack. “Whenever we wake up and go to sleep, and walk, when we're at work, do whatever, he'll be with us.”
Among the other victims of the attack in the early morning hours of January 1 was Matthew Tenedorio, an audio-visual technician at Caesars' Superdome in New Orleans.
Tenedorio, who just turned 25 in October, had spent the earlier part of the evening at his brother's home in the town of Slidell, about 35 minutes from New Orleans.
With him were his father and mother, who had recently recovered from cancer.
His cousin, Christina Bounds, told the BBC that his family “begged” him not to go to New Orleans, fearing the large crowds and potential dangers.
Despite their pleas, he went along with two friends. When the news broke, his mother ended up getting one of them.
“They said they were walking down Bourbon and saw a body fall,” she said, noting they now believe it was a body thrown into the air by the gunman's truck.
Amid screams and gunshots, Tenedorio was separated from his friends.
His family says he was shot and believed to have been killed during an exchange of gunfire between the gunman and police on Bourbon Street.
The BBC cannot independently verify this claim.
Ms Bounds said the family's tragedy was made all the more painful by the slow, almost non-existent communication they had with local authorities.
“We weren't able to get any information when my aunt (Tenedorio's mother, Kathy) showed up at the hospital,” she said. “No word from doctors, hospitals or police. No one.”
“They don't have any information and that's the part that pisses everyone off.” We don't even know what happened,” Bounds added. “Was he taken out by EMS? Was he in an ambulance? Did he die immediately?'
Those answers, she added, will “help people accept” what happened.
“But now it's like a complete shock,” she added. “Not registering.”
The family started a GoFundMe page to raise funds for Tenedorio's funeral costs – which Ms Bounds said were hampered by his mother's significant medical bills at the time of her cancer diagnosis.
Another of Tenedorio's cousins, Zach Colgan, remembers him as a goofball who was quick to joke, concerned about animals and an avid storyteller.
“He was interested. He was definitely a people person. A lucky man,” Mr Colgan told the BBC. “It's sad that a terrorist attack took him…no family should have to bury their son, especially for something so senseless.”
Mr. Colgan, who has experience working with law enforcement in Louisiana, said he believed the officers did the best they could in an extremely tense victim situation.
“I know it's chaotic. But part of closure is getting answers. “I know my aunt and uncle couldn't understand anything other than 'yes, Matthew was killed,'” he said.
“It would be nice to know a bit more,” added Mr Colgan. “If it was my child, I'd want to know.”
While his family continues to search for answers, Mr Colgan says he hopes the government and the public will continue to focus on the victims rather than the response of law enforcement or what else could have been done to prevent the attack .
“I want every one of them to be remembered,” he said. “They don't deserve this. Nobody deserves this.”