A senior FBI official told reporters on Jan. 2 that the agency believes the suspect who killed more than a dozen people by driving a truck into a crowd of New Year’s revelers acted alone to carry out an “evil act” of terror.
Christopher Raia, deputy assistant director of the FBI’s counter-terrorism division, said at the New Orleans press conference on Jan. 2 that 14 people had been killed and at least 35 injured in what he said was a “senseless attack.”
Shamsud-Din Jabbar of Texas has been identified as the suspect in the deadly attack, which took place at around 3:15 a.m. on Jan. 1 toward the end of New Year’s celebrations on Bourbon Street. Jabbar died in a shootout with police after driving a truck into a crowd of revelers and firing at officers, officials said.
“Let me be very clear about this point,” Raia said at the press conference. “This was an act of terrorism.”
Hundreds of tips have been called in about the incident, Raia said, adding that while investigators are running them down aggressively, the investigation would take time to complete. At this stage of the probe, however, the FBI does not believe Jabbar had any accomplices in what Raia described as a premeditated “evil act.”
“We do not assess, at this point, that anyone else involved in this attack—is involved in this attack—except for Shamsud-Din Jabbar, the subject you’ve already been briefed on,” Raia said.
Jabbar is believed to have picked up a rented Ford F-150 Lightning pickup truck in Houston on Dec. 30, Raia said. The suspect then drove to New Orleans on Dec. 31, posting several videos to online platforms proclaiming his support for ISIS, including five videos posted on his Facebook page, Raia said, noting that the last video was posted at 3:02 a.m., just minutes before the deadly attack.
In one of the videos, Jabbar disclosed he originally planned to harm his family and friends but opted against doing so out of concern that news headlines would not focus on the “war between the believers and the disbelievers,” according to Raia. The suspect also allegedly revealed in one of the videos that he had joined the ISIS terrorist group before the summer of 2024.
In a prior update, the FBI said it had not ruled out whether Jabbar acted alone. Alethea Duncan, the FBI special agent for New Orleans, told reporters at a press conference on Jan. 1 that Jabbar, a U.S. citizen, may have had accomplices and urged the public to come forward with any relevant information about the suspect. Officials have not yet released the names of the 14 people killed in the attack.
Raia also said in the Jan. 2 update that the FBI had found “no definitive link” between the New Orleans attack linked to Jabbar and a truck explosion outside the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas.
Seven people sustained minor injuries when a Tesla Cybertruck exploded in the early morning hours of Jan. 1 outside President-elect Donald Trump’s Las Vegas hotel. Video footage revealed a collection of charred fireworks mortars, canisters, and other explosives packed into the truck’s bed. Despite the explosion, the truck bed walls remained intact, as the blast was directed upward rather than outward.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk said in a post on X: “We have now confirmed that the explosion was caused by very large fireworks and/or a bomb carried in the bed of the rented Cybertruck and is unrelated to the vehicle itself.
“All vehicle telemetry was positive at the time of the explosion.”
In a separate post, he labeled the incident “a terrorist attack.”
Speaking at the Jan. 2 press conference in New Orleans, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry expressed condolences to the victims’ families and said that law enforcement assets have been surged to the area to assist with the investigation.
This article was originally published by The Epoch Times.
Tom Ozimek | The Epoch Times
Tom Ozimek is a senior reporter for The Epoch Times. He has a broad background in journalism, deposit insurance, marketing and communications, and adult education.
