NEW ORLEANS — Carmela and Emile Graham are devastated.

Their 23-year-old son, also named Emile, is one of the more than 30 injured during the Bourbon Street attack early New Year’s morning in New Orleans.

“We got a call around three something in the morning, stating our son was going to UMC for an accident,” Carmela Graham said.

The Grahams arrived at the hospital to learn their son was hit by an Army veteran who drove a truck into revelers in the French Quarter, leaving 14 dead and many others like their son with life-altering injuries.

“His right shoulder broke in three different places,” Carmela Graham said. “His ribs are fractured. His hips were fractured, and both of his legs are broken.”

The Grahams, who have a farm in Plaquemines Parish, say the city should have done a better job securing the Quarter during the New Year’s and Sugar Bowl festivities.

“They should have protected the people better than this,” the elder Emile Graham said. “Nobody deserved to die like that. These people are burying their children. These are all young people that got hurt.”

“It was just completely like they left it open for something like this to happen,” Carmela Graham said.

Tuesday, Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill announced she has launched a top to bottom review of what security measures were in place, what weren’t, and why.

“That’s not a process that’s necessarily designed to blame anybody,” Murrill said. “It’s a process so that we can really critically evaluate how we got here and to make sure we never end up here again.”

According to Murrill, we must be prepared for a new, more troubling reality.

“We have to wrap our arms around the fact that this city can be a target for terrorism and that isn’t going to change.”

The Grahams have now opened a GoFundMe account to help their son with medical and other expenses.

“Trying to stay strong for him, but some of the stuff he’s going through is just hard because I want to take his pain from him, but I can’t,” the elder Emile said.

Graham’s best friend, Hubert Gautreaux, a 21-year-old Archbishop Shaw High School graduate from the Westbank, died in the attack.

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