The US Army Veteran who drove a pickup truck into a crowd of New Year’s Eve revelers acted alone, the FBI said Thursday, reversing its position a day earlier that he likely worked with others to carry out the attack deadly, which officials say was an act of terrorism inspired by the Islamic State group.
The FBI also revealed that the driver, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a US citizen from Texas, posted five videos on his Facebook account in the hours before the attack in which he aligned himself with IS and he told viewers that he had joined the militant group earlier. last summer
“This was an act of terrorism. It was a premeditated and evil act,” said Christopher Raia, deputy assistant director of the FBI’s counterterrorism division.
the attack killed 14 peopleincluding an 18-year-old woman who had ambitions to become a nurse. Authorities initially put the death toll at 15, which included Jabbar, who was shot dead in a shootout with police.
Officials had said Wednesday they were looking for additional potential suspects in the attack, which occurred when Jabbar swerved around a police roadblock and launched himself into a crowd.
But Raia said the current assessment is that he acted alone, without co-conspirators.
Authorities recovered a black Islamic State flag from the truck, and President Joe Biden said the FBI told him that Jabbar, a US citizen from Texas, had posted videos on social media hours before the carnage they showed was motivated by the militant group and expressed a desire to kill.
He was shot and killed by police, and the FBI said Wednesday it believed he did not act alone. Investigators found weapons and what appeared to be an improvised explosive device in the vehicle, along with other explosive devices elsewhere in the French Quarter.
Officials were deployed to serve search warrants and spent hours at a Houston-area home believed 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 seeking more suspects.
The commotion turned the festive Bourbon Street into a macabre scene of mutilated victims, bloodied bodies and pedestrians fleeing for safety inside nightclubs and restaurants. In addition to the dead, dozens of people were injured.
Zion Parsons, 18, of Gulfport, Mississippi, said he saw the truck “going by, throwing people like in a movie scene, throwing people in the air.”
“Bodies, bodies all up and down the street, everybody screaming and screaming,” said Parsons, whose friend Nikyra Dedeaux was among the dead.
But on Thursday, a still reeling city was returning to normal operations. Authorities finished processing the scene by early morning, removing the last of the bodies, and Bourbon Street was expected to reopen sometime later in the day, according to an official familiar with the matter who spoke to condition of anonymity to The Associated Press. .
The Sugar Bowl college football game between Notre Dame and Georgia, originally scheduled for Wednesday night and postponed a day in the interest of national security, was still on Thursday. And the city was scheduled to host the Super Bowl next month.
Federal officials were investigating Jabbar’s possible associations with any terrorist organization as they searched for additional leads in what is believed to be the deadliest IS-inspired assault on American soil in years.
Meanwhile, local officials faced more questions about security protocols in the city before the attack latest example of using a vehicle as a weapon to carry out mass violence.
Jabbar drove a rented pickup onto a sidewalk and drove around a police car that was positioned to block vehicular traffic, authorities said. A barrier system was being repaired to prevent vehicle attacks in preparation for the Super Bowl.
Jabbar was killed by police after he got out of 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 “compelled to create the carnage and damage that he did,” Kirkpatrick said.
“This is not just an act of terrorism. This is bad,” he added.
Also on Wednesday, there were deadly explosions Honolulu and out to las vegas hotel owned by President-elect Donald Trump. Biden said the FBI was investigating whether the Las Vegas blast was connected to the New Orleans attack, but had “nothing to report” as of Wednesday evening.
A photo circulated among law enforcement officers showed a bearded Jabbar dressed in camouflage next to the truck after he died. The intelligence briefing obtained by the AP said he was wearing a ballistic vest and helmet. The flag of the Islamic State group was on the truck’s trailer hitch, the FBI said.
“For those people who don’t believe in evil intent, all you have to do is look at what happened in our city early this morning,” said US Sen. John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana. “If that doesn’t trigger the gag reflex of all Americans, of all fair-minded Americans, I’d be very surprised.”
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.
Hours after the attack, several coroner’s office vans were parked at the corner of Borbó and Canal streets, cordoned off by police tape with a crowd of dazed tourists around, some trying to navigate their luggage through the maze of blockages
Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry urged people to avoid the area, which remained an active crime scene.
“We looked out our front door and saw caution tape and dead silence, and it’s weird,” said Tessa Cundiff, an Indiana native who moved to the French Quarter a few years ago. “This is not what we fell in love with, it’s sad.”
Biden, speaking from the presidential retreat at Camp David, addressed the victims and the people of New Orleans: “I want you to know that I grieve with you. Our nation grieves with you as you mourn and as you heal “.
FBI officials have repeatedly warned of an elevated international terrorist threat due to the war between Israel and Hamas. In the past year, the agency has disrupted other potential attacks, including in October when it arrested an Afghan man in Oklahoma in an alleged Election Day plot targeting large crowds.