Authorities had said Wednesday that they were seeking other potential suspects. But the current assessment is that Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar acted alone
The man who drove a truck into a crowd on Bourbon Street in New Orleans on New Year’s Day was a 42-year-old U.S. Army veteran who recently held a well-paying job in his native Texas.
Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar, 42, died at the scene in a shootout with law enforcement.
The FBI now says Jabbar acted alone in an “act of terrorism” that killed 14 people and injured 35 others. The FBI also revealed Thursday that he posted five videos on his Facebook account in the hours before the 3 a.m. attack in which he aligned himself with IS and told viewers that he had joined the terror group before last summer.
Authorities recovered a black flag of the Islamic State in the truck.
“This was an act of terrorism. It was premeditated and an evil act,” said Christopher Raia, the deputy assistant director of the FBI’s counterterrorism division.
Authorities had said Wednesday that they were seeking additional potential suspects. But Raia said the current assessment is that he acted without any conspirators.
Investigators believe Jabbar got out of the crashed truck wearing body armor and camouflage fatigues and armed with a rifle, said a law enforcement official briefed on the investigation.
The official said that a cooler was found inside his truck — a white Ford F-150 Lightning rented in Houston — with an improvised explosive device, and that two other devices, also in coolers, were found nearby, all containing nails.
The FBI obtained surveillance video of Jabbar placing the explosive devices where they were found, said Raia.
The FBI also found “no definitive link” between the New Orleans attack and the Tesla Cybertruck explosion outside a Trump hotel in Las Vegas later that day.
“He was 100 per cent inspired by ISIS,” Raia said. “We’re digging through more social media, more interviews … to ascertain more about that.”
Raia said there was an indication that the attacker was initially going to hurt his friends and family but pivoted to a larger attack because he felt the news media would be more likely to focus on “the war between the believers and nonbelievers. He also left a last will and testament, the FBI said.
He was a U.S. citizen from Texas, the FBI said, contradicting a statement made by President-elect Donald Trump that appeared to link the attack to “criminals coming in” to the United States.
In a 2020 YouTube video, a man with Jabbar’s name said he was born and raised in Beaumont, Texas. Grant Savoy, a classmate at Beaumont’s Central High School, said he was shocked to hear the news about the deadly event. He described Jabbar as “a regular dude.”
Jabbar had at least three children, Texas court records show, and was married at least twice. The current husband of one woman told the Washington Post, speaking from a Houston neighbourhood, that Jabbar and his ex-wife had two daughters, now 14 and 20. He later remarried and had a son with another woman, whom he divorced in 2022.
Court records show Jabbar faced a deteriorating financial situation while separating from his second wife. He said he was $27,000 behind on house payments, accumulated $16,000 in credit card debt and wanted to quickly finalize the divorce.
At the time, court documents show he made about $10,000 a month doing business development and other work for Deloitte. In a statement, Deloitte said Jabbar had “served in a staff-level role” since being hired in 2021 and that the company was doing all it could to assist authorities.
Abdur-Rahim Jabbar, Jabbar’s younger brother, told The Associated Press on Thursday that it “doesn’t feel real” that his brother could have done this.
“I never would have thought it’d be him,” he said. “It’s completely unlike him.”
He said that his brother had been isolated in the last few years, but that he had also been in touch with him and he didn’t see any signs of radicalization.
“It’s completely contradictory to who he was and how his family and his friends know him,” he said.
He was an Army veteran, enlisting in 2007 and deploying to Afghanistan in 2009 as a human resources specialist. He left active duty in January 2015 and continued to serve part-time in the Army Reserve, switching careers to information technology.
A man identified as Shamsuddin (also Shamuddin) Bahar Jabbar said in court records that he was honourably discharged after he was caught in 2014 driving while intoxicated on base.
He left the military in July 2020 as a staff sergeant, the Army said, having served for a total of 13 years. His two military jobs, which are not combat-related, do not indicate any specialized weapon or explosive experience.
A man with Jabbar’s name held a real estate licence from 2019 until it expired in 2023 in Texas, according to an online database at the Texas Real Estate Commission. In the 2020 YouTube video, which has been taken down, a man named Shamsud-Din Jabbar introduced himself as a property manager and real estate salesman, calling himself a “fierce negotiator” who would “brilliantly” market property.
“I’ve been here all my life,” he said in the video. He also provided details about military service that matched the records released by the Pentagon.
In the military, he said in the video, “I learned the meaning of great service and what it means to be responsive and take everything seriously.”
— With additional reporting by The Associated Press
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