BY OSABUOHIEN VIVIAN ROSE
A U.S. Army veteran who drove a pickup truck into a crowd of New Year’s revelers acted alone, the FBI said Thursday, reversing its position from a day earlier that he likely worked with others in the deadly attack that officials said was inspired by the Islamic State group.
The FBI also revealed that the driver, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42, a U.S. citizen from Texas, posted five videos on his Facebook account in the hours before the attack in which he proclaimed his support for the militant group and previewed the violence that he would soon unleash in the city’s famed French Quarter district.
“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, calling Jabbar “100% inspired” by the Islamic State.
The attack killed 14 revelers, along with Jabbar, who was fatally shot in a firefight with police after steering his speeding truck around a barricade and plowing into the crowd.
It was the deadliest IS-inspired assault on U.S. soil in years, in what federal officials have warned is a resurgent international terrorism threat and coming as the FBI and other agencies brace for dramatic leadership upheaval — and likely policy changes — after President-elect Donald Trump’s administration takes office.
Seeking to assuage concerns about any broader plots, Raia stressed that there was no indication of a connection between the New Orleans attack and the explosion Wednesday of a Tesla Cybertruck filled with explosives outside Trump’s Las Vegas hotel. The person inside that truck, a decorated U.S. Army Green Beret, sustained a gunshot wound to the head before the explosion, and a handgun was found at his feet inside the charred vehicle, authorities said Thursday.
The FBI continued to hunt for clues about Jabbar, but said that a day into its investigation, it was now confident that he was not aided by anyone else in the attack, which killed an 18-year-old aspiring nurse, a single mother, a father of two and a former Princeton University football star, among others.
Officials have concluded that none of the individuals seen in surveillance video standing near an improvised explosive device that Jabbar placed in a cooler along the city’s Bourbon Street, where the attack occurred, were involved “in any way,” though investigators do want to speak with them as witnesses, Raia said.
The device in the cooler and another explosive device were rendered safe at the scene. Others were determined to be nonfunctional.
Investigators were also trying to understand more about Jabbar’s path to radicalization, which they say culminated with him picking up a rented truck in Houston on Dec. 30 and driving it to New Orleans the following night.
The FBI recovered a black Islamic State flag from his rented pickup and reviewed five videos posted to Facebook, including one in which he said he originally planned to harm his family and friends, but was concerned that news headlines would not focus on the “war between the believers and the disbelievers,” Raia said. He also left a last will and testament, the FBI said.
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.
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.
In New Orleans on Thursday, a still-reeling city inched back toward normal operations. Authorities finished processing the scene early in the morning, removing the last of the bodies, and Bourbon Street — famous worldwide for music, open-air drinking and festive vibes — reopened for business by early afternoon.
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. The city also planned to host the Super Bowl next month.
New Orleans “is not only ready for game day today, but we’re ready to continue to host large-scale events in our city because we are built to host at every single turn,” New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell said.
Credit — AP
