Joe Biden said suspect in attack that also injured at least 30 expressed a ‘desire to kill’ in videos
At least 15 people have been killed and more than 30 injured after a vehicle flying an Islamic State (IS) flag drove into a crowd in New Orleans’ tourist district in the early hours of New Year’s Day.
The FBI said Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a 42-year-old US citizen from Texas, drove a Ford pickup truck into a crowd of revelers on New Orleans’ famous Bourbon Street at about 3.15am. He then got out and fired bullets at police – injuring two – before they shot him to death.
Jabbar’s truck appeared to have been rented, and agents were working to verify how he came to possess it, the FBI said. In addition to an Islamic State flag in the back, agents found weapons as well as a “potential” improvised explosive device.
At least two improvised explosive devices were planted relatively nearby but did not detonate, according to information in a bulletin distributed to senior law enforcement sources briefed on the investigation.
In brief remarks on Wednesday evening, Joe Biden said the FBI had found that “mere hours before the attack” the suspect “posted videos on social media indicating that he was inspired by Isis, expressing a desire to kill”.
Biden said the investigation was still in a preliminary stage and that the situation was “fluid”.
Biden said law enforcement was continuing to look for any connections, associations or co-conspirators. He said investigators were also probing the explosion of a Tesla Cybertruck outside Donald Trump’s hotel in Las Vegas and whether there was any possible connection with the attack in New Orleans.
Earlier on Wednesday, the FBI said it was “working with our partners to investigate this as an act of terrorism”.
The New Orleans police superintendent, Anne Kirkpatrick, said in a news conference on Wednesday morning: “It was very intentional behavior. This man was trying to run over as many people as he possibly could. He was hellbent on creating the carnage and the damage that he did.”
The attacker managed to drive his white pickup truck between the 100 and 400 blocks of Bourbon Street in the lower part of the French Quarter, which was packed with people celebrating New Year’s Eve. The area is a popular nightlife destination that attracts tourists and locals.
After driving the truck into the crowd, the attacker fired a rifle from the vehicle while wearing body armor as well as a helmet. He later jumped out of the truck and fired on police, according to the bulletin.
The bulletin said that about 30 minutes after the suspect was shot dead, investigators found a pipe bomb with nails and suspected C4 explosives inside an ice chest left near police patrol cars at the corner of Bourbon and Orleans streets, roughly three blocks from where the attack ended.
A second device was found about a block away from the first. Investigators spotted a third possible device in a purple suitcase near the corner of North Rampart Street and Esplanade Avenue, toward the upper edge of the French Quarter.
Two of the devices have been confirmed as pipe bombs concealed within coolers that were wired for remote detonation, the bulletin said. Investigators discovered a corresponding remote in Jabbar’s truck, which also had mason jars containing a clear liquid consistent with explosives.
Officers determined a fourth possible device was not explosive.
A short-term rental home linked to Jabbar – in New Orleans’s St Roch neighborhood, less than two miles from the scene of the attack – was on fire on Wednesday morning.
Officers arrived to find the home had been intentionally set on fire, the bulletin said, and – after firefighters brought the blaze under control – discovered bomb-making materials there.
Louisiana’s attorney general, Liz Murrill, told NBC Nightly News With Lester Holt that “these individuals [who] had rented the house were using it for that purpose”.
The FBI said on Wednesday it did not believe Jabbar was “solely responsible” for the deadly attack and asked the public for help in tracking down associates.
The bulletin said surveillance camera footage showed three men and a woman planting one of the explosive devices. But CNN later reported that investigators had since ruled out those people as having anything to do with planting the devices.
Meanwhile, a second car near the attack is drawing focus. Security cameras owned by New Orleans’ city government identified one car in particular that was following the truck with which Jabbar carried out the attack, according to the intelligence bulletin. The bulletin said both the truck and that second car shared a link: each was owned by a Texas resident who previously lived in the New Orleans suburb of Harvey, and both were rented out. Police descended on the owner’s address in Harvey but did not find him there, the bulletin said. ABC News reported speaking to the owner, who described having spoken with the FBI.
The Houston news station KPRC2 reported drone video showing a man at a home connected to Jabbar surrendering to authorities. Earlier, the FBI said agents in Houston were “conducting law enforcement activity” at an area in the north part of the city in connection with the attack in New Orleans.
Jabbar served in the US army for 13 years, according to army officials. He was a human resource specialist and information technology specialist from 2007 until 2015. He then joined the army reserve as an IT specialist where he served until 2020, including as a staff sergeant, an army official said. He also deployed to Afghanistan from February 2009 to January 2010.
In August 2004, before his army service, Jabbar enlisted in the navy, but he was discharged a month later, a navy official told Reuters. NBC reported that he did not attend recruit training in the navy and thus did not serve.
In a a social media video touting a real estate business for which he worked after the military, Jabbar recounted how he had grown up in Beaumont, Texas – about an hour east of Houston – and had remained there most of his life until he joined the military.
In the footage, he said his military experience enabled him to be “a fierce negotiator” for his real estate clients, among other things.
Online Texas criminal court records show Jabbar had relatively minor offenses in his past, including a misdemeanor theft and driving with an invalid license before his military service.
The New York Times reported he was twice divorced. And in 2022, during the second divorce, he reportedly wrote an email complaining that he needed to settle the divorce because he could not afford to make his house payment otherwise.
The Times reported speaking to the new husband of Jabbar’s second ex-wife, Nakedra Charrlle. Charrlle’s husband, Dwayne Marsh, said Jabbar – who had two daughters with Charrlle – had converted to Islam at some point and more recently started acting “all crazy, cutting his hair”. Marsh said he and Charrlle eventually stopped allowing her daughters – ages 15 and 20 – to spend time with Jabbar and that each of them were “a mess” after the attack.
In an evening update, the New Orleans coroner said the death toll from Wednesday’s attack stood at at least 15.
Local media identified the first known fatalities as Nikyra Cheyenne Dedeaux, 18, who had traveled to New Orleans from nearby Gulfport, Mississippi, with a cousin and a friend; Reggie Hunter, a 37-year-old father of two from Baton Rouge, Louisiana; and Tiger Bech, a 27-year-old Lafayette, Louisiana, native and former football player. A fourth victim was named as Nicole Perez, a 28-year-old mother and delicatessen manager from Metairie, Louisiana, who was celebrating the new year with friends.
The New Orleans police chief said the two police officers who had been shot were in stable condition at New Orleans’ University medical center. The police chief said most of the injured were believed to be local residents, and not visitors.
As the sun began to rise over the city on New Year’s Day, law enforcement from a number of agencies had swarmed across the city’s French Quarter. Much of Bourbon Street was blocked off as police checked the area for secondary devices.
New Orleans’ government for years has been using bollards meant to prevent motorists from driving up Bourbon Street at particularly crowded times, including for major celebrations like New Year’s. But those bollards were down for repairs at the time of Wednesday morning’s attack.
At the intersection of Bourbon Street and Canal Street, usually a bustling tourist hub, dozens of city police cars lined the streets. Yellow police tape was wrapped around the main drag and three white vans from the parish coroner’s office were parked parallel, near where the attack took place.
One resident, who did not want to give his name, had been asleep at his home nearby when the attacks began and said he awoke to “screams of terror” and shouts of “no!”
Jay McGuffey, 28, told the Guardian she had been visiting the city from Mississippi and had been in a nightclub on Bourbon Street when the incident took place.
“We were just having fun, celebrating New Year’s, and then they told us to get out ’cause somebody had got shot. Then we heard that a truck had been through here, and 15 people had been shot,” McGuffey said.
The witness added that she had not been allowed into her hotel because there were still bodies on the ground. “How did this happen? There are like 100 cops out here,” she said.
A security camera video directed at Canal Street captured the truck at the center of Wednesday’s attack approaching Bourbon Street, which was blocked off by a police patrol cruiser. The truck turned right, went around the front of the cruiser, climbed the sidewalk and then sped up on Bourbon Street – seeming to hit people before vanishing from view of the camera, according to video of the footage circulating later on Wednesday.
CNN quoted a witness, Kevin Garcia, 22, as saying: “All I seen was a truck slamming into everyone on the left side of Bourbon sidewalk.
“A body came flying at me,” he said, adding that he had also heard gunshots.
New Orleans has postponed the Sugar Bowl, a major college football game between the University of Georgia and the University of Notre Dame originally scheduled for Wednesday evening, to Thursday. The city is also preparing to host the NFL’s Super Bowl on 9 February.
The city hosted a parade on Tuesday ahead of the Sugar Bowl, and according to CNN, the New Orleans police department had said it would be staffed “at 100%” during the festivities.
