The terrorist behind the attack on New Year’s Eve revelers in New Orleans is an army veteran, real estate agent, and Deloitte IT guru.
Shamsud Din Jabbar, 42, drove a pickup truck with an ISIS flag into a crowd on Bourbon Street at around 3:15 am. His actions resulted in the death of 15 people and left at least 25 others injured.
He was dressed in military attire and had placed bombs inside a white electric Ford F-150 Lightning truck. He used the truck to run over pedestrians and then proceeded to shoot more victims after getting out of the vehicle.
However, just two years prior to this horrific incident, Jabbar was leading a typical American life. He worked hard, established businesses, and was married with a family.
Jabbar was born in Beamont, Texas, to Abdal and Herma Jabbar, who still live in the town, and grew up with two brothers and attending Central Senior High School.
‘I’ve been here all my life, with the exception of traveling for the military where I spent 10 years as a human resources and IT specialist,’ he said in a video promoting himself as a real estate agent in 2020.
Jabbar first enlisted in the US Navy in 2004 but left a month later before basic training started. Three years later he joined the army instead.
His only criminal history was during this period, with arrests in 2002 for class B misdemeanor theft, and in 2005 for driving with a suspended license.
Shamsud Din Jabbar, 42, rammed a pickup truck flying an ISIS flag into a crowd on Bourbon Street about 3.15am, killing 15 and injuring at least 25 more
After enlisting, he was on active duty from March 2007 to January 2015 and was deployed to Afghanistan between February 2009 and January 2010, the US Army confirmed.
Jabbar graduated from the Fort Gordon NCO Academy in Augusta, Georgia, and the Richardson NCO Academy in Alaska.
He got his associates degree in computer science at Central Texas College in 2008 to 2010.
He was discharged at the rank of staff sergeant, and stayed on in the US Army Reserve as an information technology operations manager in 2015.
The same year, he began his bachelor’s degree in business administration for computer information systems at Georgia State University.
Jabbar’s career took off after he graduated in 2017 as he pursued both real estate and cloud computing at the same time, living in Houston.
He founded Blue Meadow Properties in 2017, acting as its property manager and president, and promoting it as a veteran-owned business.
‘I ran a service desk responsible for support services to thousands of soldiers,’ he wrote on the company website.
‘Today, every member of my company understands these values and apply them here daily at Blue Meadow Properties – loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity, and personal courage.’
Despite starting the company in 2017, he didn’t get his real estate license until 2019 and didn’t take any classes until 2018. His license lapsed in 2023.
Jabbar founded Blue Meadow Properties in 2017, acting as its property manager and president, and promoting it as a veteran-owned business
Jabbar was arrested in 2002 for class B misdemeanor theft, and in 2005 for driving with a suspended license
Jabbar told prospective clients in the video that his military experience was ‘where I learned the meaning of great service’.
‘What it means to be responsive and take everything seriously – dotting Is and crossing Ts to make sure things go off without a hitch,’ he said.
He said what set him apart was being a ‘fierce negotiator’ who could ‘brilliantly market your property to make sure it gets sold as quickly as possible’.
Jabbar promised to ‘take every ounce of energy into negotiating for you’ to get the best deal possible.
At the same time, Jabbar was working for some of the biggest consulting firms in the world where helped ‘several Fortune 100 companies to guide them in large transformation projects’.
Archives of his LinkedIn page showed he worked at Accenture as a cloud migration engineer in 2018 to 2019, Ernst & Young in cloud computing in 2018 to 2021, and in data engineering and business development for Deloitte in 2022.
The Blue Meadow Properties Instagram page, which was taken down on Wednesday
The driver who plowed into pedestrians celebrating the New Year in New Orleans killing at least 10 people and injuring dozens is dead following a shootout with police
But suddenly it all appeared to unravel in 2022, when his work history abruptly stopped and he went through a messy divorce with his second wife.
‘I cannot afford the house payment,’ he wrote in an email to his estranged wife Shaneen Jabbar’s lawyer Daryl Longworth in January 2022.
‘It is past due in excess of $27,000 and in danger of foreclosure if we delay settling the divorce.’
Jabbar was in a financial hole because his real estate company was bleeding money, losing $28,000 the previous year, and he had $16,000 in credit card debt to pay his own lawyer, he told Longworth.
He suggested he and Shaneen sell the house and divide the profits evenly, but instead sold the house, in Fresno, Texas, to her to cover his debts.
Shaneen blamed his financial situation on ‘excessive cash withdrawals, gifts to paramours’ and ‘unreasonable and unnecessary spending’ in her court filings.
A later court document, when the case was finally resolved in August 2022, revealed he earned $120,000 a year in his job at Deloitte.
Jabbar first filed for divorce in July 2020 and Judge David Perwin felt the it wise to order the couple to stay away from each other while it was ongoing.
The standard conditions prohibited them ‘threatening the other party or a child of either party with imminent bodily injury’.
They also couldn’t withdraw the child from school, hide them, or move them out of the jurisdiction.
Shaneen, who reverted to her maiden name McDaniel after the divorce, wasn’t his only ex-wife, as he was married two, possibly three, times.
A previous ex-wife, Nakedra Ball, from whom he divorced in 2012 while station at Fort Bregg, North Carolina, remarried to Dwayne Marsh – who revealed the final piece of the puzzle.
Marsh told the New York Times that Jabbar began to convert to Islam only within the past year or so, and was ‘being all crazy, cutting his hair’ since then.
His behavior was so concerning that she stopped letting him see their daughters, aged 15 and 20, whom he said were ‘a mess’.
After selling the house to Shaneen, he moved into a mobile home on a squalid block surrounded by farm animals in Houston he found in a Facebook marketplace listing.
Jabbar also spent 10 days in Egypt last year.
His landlord, Asia Maryam, told the New Orleans Advocate that he paid cash on time every month and never caused problems.
Then a few weeks ago he told her he was moving to New Orleans and would give his keys to the new tenant after he visited his new city ahead of the relocation.
He never came back.
