California man celebrating wedding anniversary killed in Barcelona attack
LAFAYETTE, California -- The American man killed in a van attack in Las Ramblas, Barcelona, has been identified as Jared Tucker, his father confirmed Friday.
Dan Tucker told CBS San Francisco that his daughter-in-law Heidi Nunes told family members that her husband's body was identified among the dead at a Barcelona morgue.
The couple was in the Spanish city celebrating their one-year wedding anniversary when Thursday's deadly attack began to unfold, he said.
Jared had just headed to a restaurant to use the restroom, and moments later, as chaos unfolded, Nunes sought shelter in a kiosk, Dan Tucker explained. When Nunes left the kiosk, she couldn't find her husband.
He said his family and friends were shocked to see footage of the aftermath in news footage. He said some of the victims shown appeared to resemble Jared.
"All day yesterday, from the time that it happened until this morning, we've been going back and forth but not knowing anything other than the fact that we saw a person on ground wearing the same color clothes that Jared wore that day," Dan Tucker said. "The general feeling of the people who know him well was that, that was Jared."
"He had some blood on the side of his head and on his arm, but there was a person kneeling with him so we were encouraged to think it was an injury and not anything serious," he explained, "but he wasn't moving."
The family is still trying to process the tragedy.
"It's hard for us to understand," he said. "It's the first time he has even been in Europe. He's at [Las] Ramblas at the wrong time. How could this happen? But it looks like it did."
On Monday morning, the U.S. State Department confirmed to CBS News that one American citizen was killed and another was injured in the attack. They did not identify either victim.
The 14 people killed and dozens wounded in two separate attacks were from 34 different countries, including France, Germany, China, Australia and Peru, Spanish emergency services announced Friday.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said in a news conference Friday that officials were "still confirming the injuries and deaths of others."
"We express our deepest sympathies to the loved ones of this individual, and obviously the others who have suffered loss of life. We offer our thoughts and prayers to their families as they're going to be dealing with a very few tough days ahead of them," Tillerson said.
An Australian family said a 7-year-old boy was missing after he was separated from his mother, who was seriously injured in the attack.
Authorities investigating both attacks believe there may have been a cell of eight people involved, and that the group planned to use butane gas canisters, the Reuters news agency reports, citing an unnamed judicial source.
U.S. law enforcement officials told CBS News there is intelligence that indicates the Barcelona attack was more than just an ISIS-inspired attack.
CBS News national security analyst Fran Townsend said the attack looks like it was "much more directly controlled than merely inspired."
"As you look at the chronology, this was a fairly large cell, had to have been in place for a while -- pretty good planning," Townsend said on "CBS This Morning."
"You had the house that blew up when they failed to put together these gas canisters -- probably for a car bomb," Townsend explained. "Then you had the tragic sort of seven-block rage of this car killing 14. You also had in Cambrils last night another car attack."
Alex Luque, a native New Yorker, was at the scene when the van plowed into pedestrians.
"Within seconds, it was panic," he recalled. "Upon impact, you just start seeing bodies, and you start seeing people sprinting. You could tell that was the definition of fear."