THE New Orleans terrorist made plans to slay his family but instead chose to kill innocent strangers so the world would focus on his attack on “non-believers”
US Army veteran Shamsud-Din Jabbar rammed his pickup truck through a crowd of New Year’s Day revellers – killing 14 people and injuring dozens more.
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 months before the January 1 attack on New Orleans’ Bourbon Street.
Hours before the attack, Jabbar posted five videos on social media where he proclaimed his support for ISIS as he traveled from Houston to New Orleans on the evening of December 31.
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.
Jabbar, who Raia stated was 100% inspired by ISIS, said in one of the videos that he had joined the terrorist organization “before the summer”.
Raia said the FBI is now confident there are no accomplices, and it’s believed Jabbar attacked on his own.
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.
Jabbar was married twice: first to Nakedra Marsh and then to Shaneen Jabbar from who he was divorced in 2012 and 2020 respectively.
Dwayne Marsh, who is married to Nakedra, said Jabbar had been acting erratically in recent months.
Dwayne said Jabbar was “being all crazy, cutting his hair” after converting to Islam.
He added that Nakedra had stopped allowing the two daughters she shared with Jabbar, aged 15 and 20, to spend time with him.
Jabbar also has a 6-year-old son from his second wife.
According to TMZ, a woman who identifies herself as “Teira” says she was married to Jabbar for five years and that he abused her during the unhappy relationship.
She did not think he was capable of mass murder, however, and did not think that he was driven by such hatred.
TMZ said Tiera last heard from Jabbar about two months ago when he reached out to tell her he’d been thinking about the son they lost when she suffered a miscarriage.
She said they had a pleasant conversation reflecting on the past.
Public records show that Jabbar’s second wife filed for a temporary restraining order against him.
The order forbade Jabbar from, among other things, sending threatening or obscene messages to his wife or causing “bodily injury” to her or their child.
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.
NO LINK TO LAS VEGAS EXPLOSION
Raia said there is “no definitive link” between the Bourbon Street terrorist attack and the Las Vegas explosion outside the Trump International, which is also being investigated as a terrorist plot.
Surveillance footage captured the dramatic moment a Tesla Cybertruck exploded at the front entrance of one of the president-elect’s lavish hotels in Sin City.
The futuristic truck, rigged with fireworks, gas tanks, and camping fuel in the trunk, was ripped apart by a huge explosion after being detonated by the driver, according to CNN.
The link between the Las Vegas explosion and the Bourbon Street massacre came after investigators said both the Cybertruck and the F-150 were rented through the online rental website Turo.
The person who rented the Cybertruck was identified as US Army veteran Matthew Livelsberger.
At some point, both Livelsberger and domestic terrorist Jabbar were stationed in North Carolina’s Fort Liberty, formerly Fort Bragg, at the same time and were also on active deployment in Afghanistan.
However, investigators have not determined whether Livelsberger and Jabbar’s paths ever crossed.
Investigators said Livelsberger rented the Cybertruck in Colorado Springs, Colorado, before traveling to Las Vegas, where he detonated an explosion outside the Trump International on Wednesday morning.
The blast killed Livelsberger, 37, and injured seven others.
