CCTV footage has emerged showing the New Orleans terrorist loading up his truck containing the ISIS flag with weapons and explosives.
A recording was made of Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a former US Army soldier, standing outside his rented AirBnB shortly before he drove his pickup truck into a crowd celebrating New Year’s Day.
Footage obtained by CNN shows Jabbar preparing for the deadly attack that rocked New Orleans on New Year’s Day.
Just a few hours before the rampage, Jabbar can be seen moving around the same pickup truck that he used to carry out the terror attack.
He can then be seen loading what appears to be weapons and explosives at the back of the Ford F-150.
The car was parked outside his rental AirBnB that sits just two miles away from the Bourbon Street locations where he carried out the attack.
It is understood that Jabbar picked up the Ford pickup truck on December 30 from Houston using a carsharing app called Turo.
The vehicle was spotted in Baytown, Texas on New Year’s Eve heading towards New Orleans.
Just a few hours later the truck reappeared in the city’s bustling French Quarter which was packed out with people celebrating the start of 2025.
The frightening incident began at about 3:15am on Wednesday when Jabbar was seen driving down Canal Street and then onto Bourbon Street.
Chilling footage shows the driver swerving around barricades set up to stop cars from passing before speeding up and smashing into dozens of people.
Cops believe Jabbar intentionally rammed revellers with the white pickup as he was trying to “run over as many people as he possibly could”.
He was killed during a heated exchange of fire with the cops after the attack.
The FBI revealed that former sergeant Jabbar, who was once deployed to Afghanistan, pledged his allegiance to ISIS before the summer.
Investigators also found a big ISIS flag that was attached to the back of the pickup truck.
Prior to the attack, Jabbar shared five videos on social media expressing his allegiance to ISIS as he journeyed from Houston to New Orleans on the night of December 31st.
In the first video, Jabbar, 42, explained how he initially planned to call his family and ex-wife for a “celebration” with plans to kill them together.
However, he later revealed that he pivoted his attack because he wanted news headlines to focus on the “war between the believers and the disbelievers”, said Christopher Raia, the deputy assistant director of the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division.
FBI has stated that jabbar was “100% inspired by ISIS”.
Investigators are still digging into Jabbar’s past and what radicalized the US Army veteran.
Jabbar was a US Army veteran who served for more than 10 years, including a deployment to Afghanistan in 2009.
He studied information technology, recently held a six-figure job and converted to Islam after being brought up Christian.
A man named Abdur Jabbar in Beaumont, Texas told The New York Times he was the suspect’s brother.
He described Jabbar as “a sweetheart really, a nice guy, a friend, really smart, caring”.
He said Jabber had converted to Islam at a young age, but that “what he did does not represent Islam.
“This is more some type of radicalisation, not religion.”
Alethea Duncan of the FBI said: “We believe he was honorably discharged, but we are working through this process, figuring out all this information.”
A US Army spokesperson confirmed to ABC that Jabbar served in human resources and information technology roles from 2007 to 2015 in the army, but he was not involved in direct combat.
He then continued as an IT specialist in the Army Reserve from 2015 to 2020, the spokesperson said, and left at the rank of staff sergeant.
Jabbar enlisted in the Navy in August 2024, 5 months before the attack, but did not go to boot camp and was discharged from the programme a month later, a Navy spokesperson said.
Former army commander Rich Groen who led Jabbar during his posting in Afghanistan said he was a “professional soldier”.
He wrote on X/Twitter: “Shamsud-Din Jabbar served under my Troop Command during our deployment to Afghanistan.
“He was a great Soldier, someone who showed discipline and dedication. He worked quietly and professionally in the S1 shop and as a mail clerk, ensuring the little things that kept us all connected to home were done with care and precision.
Mr Groen said he was left in “utter disbelief” following the tragic attack in New Orleans that killed 15 people and left dozens of others injured.
“To think that the same individual who once embodied quiet professionalism could harbor so much hate, leading to such unspeakable atrocities, is incomprehensible and heartbreaking,” he said.
“As I process the devastating events that unfolded in New Orleans, I am in utter disbelief,” the former army boss added.
The New York Times reported that Jabbar has been arrested twice: once in Katy, Texas, for theft in 2002, and once in 2005 for driving with an invalid licence.
In both cases, he was fined $100 by the court.
The New York Post has reported that Jabba was living in a run-down trailer park on the outskirts of Houston where he kept sheep and goats in the yard.
One neighbour, Francois Venegas, described Jabbar as a “simple person” who kept to himself but said they would occasionally exchange words on the street.
Venegas said: “[He was] pretty quiet…Just walking, [he would say] ‘hello,’ ‘hola,’ and that was it.”
Photos of the place he is thought to have lived show a squalid static home surrounded by dirty animal cages.
According to the paper, geese, chickens, goats and sheep roamed freely in Jabbar’s yard when they visited it.
The site was later cordoned off by police.
