New Orleans truck attacker acted alone, was inspired by Daesh: FBI

The U.S. Army veteran who drove a pickup truck into a crowd of New Year’s revelers acted alone, FBI said on Thursday, reversing its stance from a day earlier that he likely had accomplices in what officials say was a Daesh-inspired terrorist attack.

The FBI also revealed that the driver, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a U.S. citizen from Texas, posted five videos on his Facebook account in the hours before the attack in which he aligned himself with Daesh and said he had joined the terrorist group last summer.

“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.

The attack killed 14 people. Authorities initially put the death toll at 15, which included Jabbar, 42, who was fatally shot in a firefight with police.

Officials have not yet released the names of the people killed in the attack, but their families and friends have started sharing their stories. About 30 people were injured.

Officials had said Wednesday that they were seeking additional potential suspects in the attack, which occurred when Jabbar steered around a police blockade and plowed into a crowd.

But Raia said the current assessment is that he acted alone, without any conspirators.

In one video, Jabbar “explains he originally planned to harm his family and friends, but was concerned the news headlines would not focus on the ‘war between the believers and the disbelievers,'” said Raia.

Authorities recovered a black flag of Daesh in the truck, and President Joe Biden said he was told by the FBI that Jabbar had posted videos to social media hours before the carnage that showed he was motivated by the group and expressed a desire to kill.

“We know that he specifically picked out Bourbon Street, not sure why,” said Raia.

“He was 100% inspired” by Daesh, he added.

Investigators found guns and what appeared to be an improvised explosive device in the vehicle, along with other explosive devices elsewhere in the French Quarter.

Raia said Jabbar planted two homemade bombs on the streets of the French Quarter.

“We did obtain surveillance footage showing Jabbar placing the devices where they were found,” he said of the bombs hidden in coolers, adding that they were left on Bourbon Street – the road which he later drove down – and another spot nearby.

Officials fanned out to serve search warrants and spent hours at a Houston-area home thought to be connected to the investigation. But as of Thursday morning, no additional arrests were known to have been made, and it was unclear if the FBI was still actively looking for more suspects.

The rampage turned festive Bourbon Street into a macabre scene of maimed victims, bloodied bodies and pedestrians fleeing for safety inside nightclubs and restaurants. In addition to the dead, dozens of people were hurt.

Zion Parsons, 18, of Gulfport, Mississippi, said he saw the truck “barreling through, throwing people like in a movie scene, throwing people into the air.”

“Bodies, bodies all up and down the street, everybody screaming and hollering,” said Parsons, whose friend Nikyra Dedeaux was among the dead.

But by Thursday, a still-reeling city was inching back toward normal operations. Authorities finished processing the scene early in the morning, removing the last of the bodies, and Bourbon Street was set to reopen at some point later in the day, according to an official familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to The Associated Press (AP).

The Sugar Bowl college football game between Notre Dame and Georgia, initially set for Wednesday night and postponed by a day in the interest of national security, was still on for Thursday. And the city planned to host the Super Bowl next month.

Local officials, meanwhile, faced more questions about security protocols in the city leading up to the attack, the latest example of a vehicle being used as a weapon to carry out mass violence.

Jabbar drove a rented pickup truck onto a sidewalk, going around a police car that was positioned to block vehicular traffic, authorities said. A barrier system meant to prevent vehicle attacks was being repaired in preparation for the Super Bowl.

Jabbar was killed by police after he exited the truck and opened fire on responding officers, New Orleans Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick said. Three officers returned fire. Two were shot and are in stable condition.

The driver “defeated” safety measures in place to protect pedestrians and was “hell-bent on creating the carnage and the damage that he did,” Kirkpatrick said.

“This is not just an act of terrorism. This is evil,” she added.

No ‘definitive link’ between with Las Vegas explosion

Also on Wednesday, there were deadly explosions in Honolulu and outside a Las Vegas hotel owned by President-elect Donald Trump.

The FBI said Thursday that the New Orleans attack and the Tesla Cybertruck explosion outside the Trump hotel do not appear to be linked.

“At this point, there is no definitive link between the attack here in New Orleans and the one in Las Vegas,” Raia said.

Officials said on Thursday the person who died when the Tesla Cybertruck packed with explosives burst into flames outside Trump’s hotel was Matthew Livelsberger, a highly decorated U.S. Army Green Beret who deployed twice to Afghanistan.

A photo circulated among law enforcement officials showed a bearded Jabbar wearing camouflage next to the truck after he was killed. The intelligence bulletin obtained by the AP said he was wearing a ballistic vest and helmet.

Jabbar joined the Army in 2007, serving on active duty in human resources and information technology and deploying to Afghanistan from 2009 to 2010, the service said. He transferred to the Army Reserve in 2015 and left in 2020 with the rank of staff sergeant.

Jabbar earned a computer information systems degree from Georgia State University and worked as a real estate agent in Texas along with having licenses for hunting and fishing.

Reports suggest he also had prior brushes with the law, including theft and driving without a license.

Court records show two marriages ending in divorce, the latest in 2022.

According to several media reports, friends and family have expressed disbelief regarding his actions, describing him as kind and disciplined.

However, his latest wife suggested he has changed in a bad way in recent months, causing her to stop letting his daughters visit him.

Source » dailysabah.com