The FBI now says the New Orleans truck attacker acted alone in “act of terrorism”
Emergency services attend the scene on Bourbon Street after a vehicle drove into a crowd on New Orleans’ Canal and Bourbon Street, Wednesday Jan. 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
By ERIC TUCKER and JIM MUSTIAN Associated Press
UPDATE: The FBI now says the New Orleans truck attack acted alone when he drove a pickup truck into a crowd of New Year’s revelers, killing 14 people. The driver had posted videos on social media hours before the early Wednesday carnage saying he was inspired by the Islamic State group and expressing a desire to kill, President Joe Biden said.
The FBI has identified the driver as 42-year-old Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar, a U.S. Army veteran who was a U.S. citizen from Texas. Officials have not yet released the names of the people killed in the attack, but their families and friends have started sharing their stories. About 30 people were injured.
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Jabbar was killed in a firefight with police following the attack around 3:15AM New Year’s Day morning along Bourbon Street at Iberville Street in the city’s bustling French Quarter, the FBI said.
After the truck came to a stop, the driver emerged and open fire on responding officers, New Orleans police said. Officers returned fire, striking and killing the driver, police said.
The FBI says an Islamic State group flag was found on the hitch of the truck.
Authorities say Jabbar went around a police car that was positioned to block vehicular traffic and protect revelers.
Two officers were shot and are in stable condition, police said.
At a news conference, New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell described the killings as a “terrorist attack” and the city’s police chief said the act was clearly intentional.
Police Commissioner Anne Kirkpatrick said the driver was “hell-bent on creating the carnage and the damage that he did.” “It was very intentional behavior. This man was trying to run over as many people as he could,” Kirkpatrick said.
FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge Alethea Duncan said officials were investigating the at least one suspected improvised explosive device at the scene.
The area is known as one of the largest New Year’s Eve destinations.
Crowds in the city were ballooning in anticipation of Wednesday night’s Sugar Bowl college football playoff game at the nearby Superdome between Georgia and Notre Dame. That game has been postponed until Thursday.
Kevin Garcia, 22, told CNN that he saw a truck slamming into people on a sidewalk and heard gunshots. “A body came flying at me,” he said.
Whit Davis told the network that he heard people yelling and running to the back as he was leaving a nightclub. “When they finally let us out of the club, police waved us where to walk and were telling us to get out of the area fast. I saw a few dead bodies they couldn’t even cover up and tons of people receiving first aid,” said Davis, 22.
The injured were taken to five hospitals, the city’s emergency preparedness department said.
The White House said President Joe Biden had been briefed, and the Justice Department said Attorney General Merrick Garland was also briefed.
The attack is the latest example of a vehicle being used as a weapon to carry out mass violence, a trend that has alarmed law enforcement officials and that can be difficult to protect against.
A 50-year-old Saudi doctor plowed into a Christmas market teeming with holiday shoppers in the German city of Magdeburg last month, killing four women and a 9-year-old boy. A man who drove his SUV through a Christmas parade in suburban Milwaukee in 2021 is serving a life sentence after a judge rejected arguments from him and his family that mental illness drove him to do it. Six people were killed.
An Islamic extremist was sentenced last year to 10 life sentences for killing eight people with a truck on a bike path in Manhattan on Halloween in 2017. Also in 2017, a self-proclaimed admirer of Adolf Hitler slammed his car into counterprotesters at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia and is now serving a life sentence.
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