Months earlier than the person behind the New Orleans terror assault plowed a truck right into a New 12 months’s Day crowd, he rode by means of the world on a bicycle, recording movies of his goal utilizing eyeglasses with a built-in digital camera, investigators stated on Sunday. He was again once more just a few weeks later, they stated, most likely to proceed his plotting.
These particulars emerged as investigators revealed extra concerning the driver and the intensive planning behind the assault, which killed 14 individuals, injured many others and left New Orleans beginning 2025 grappling with a cascade of anguish and alarm.
Investigators have been pushing to piece collectively a transparent timeline of the attacker’s actions. The investigation has entailed establishing a beat-by-beat accounting of his actions within the hours instantly earlier than the assault, which included loading weapons in his rented pickup truck and planting explosive units in coolers close to the positioning of the assault, Bourbon Avenue within the metropolis’s French Quarter.
A much more sprawling search is wanting again years to attempt to perceive how a 42-year-old Military veteran with a profitable job at a world accounting agency got here to be radicalized, claiming alignment with the Islamic State terrorist group, higher generally known as ISIS.
Investigators discovered that the attacker, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, had made journeys to Egypt and Canada in 2023. However they stated on Sunday that that they had but to find out what function, if any, these travels may need performed in his evolving beliefs or his planning for the New Orleans assault.
“Our brokers are getting solutions as to the place he went, who he met with and the way these journeys could or could not tie into his actions right here in our metropolis,” Lyonel Myrthil, the particular agent in cost for the F.B.I. in New Orleans, stated at a information convention.
New Orleans has been immersed in grief for the reason that assault, but in addition marching ahead, reopening Bourbon Avenue to the general public and getting ready to host the Tremendous Bowl subsequent month, in addition to the season of celebration that precedes Mardi Gras. A crowd gathered on Bourbon Avenue on Saturday night for a vigil that included a standard second line. President Biden is scheduled to go to New Orleans on Monday.
”I consider solely the facility of prayer and religion in God can pull them and us by means of this time,” Gov. Jeff Landry, Republican of Louisiana, stated on Sunday, referring to the ache the households of the victims and the group as a complete had been navigating.
The assault ended when Mr. Jabbar, was killed in a shootout with the police that left two officers wounded. Officers praised the police for a swift response that they credited with sparing the town from extra carnage.
Mr. Jabbar expressed allegiance to ISIS after a metamorphosis that perplexed and troubled those that knew him. He had the group’s flag on the rented Ford F-150 pickup truck that he used within the assault. In a video that he recorded for his household, he stated, “I needed you to know that I joined ISIS earlier this 12 months.”
Officers stated on Sunday that they proceed to consider Mr. Jabbar acted alone in finishing up the assault, and that they had been nonetheless making an attempt to find out whether or not he had deeper ties to ISIS. It remained unclear why he selected New Orleans as his goal, officers stated.
Christopher Raia, an F.B.I. counterterrorism official, stated that people like Mr. Jabbar — who sometimes are radicalized on-line, use simply accessible weapons and act alone or in small clusters — had been maybe the “biggest terror risk” the nation faces.
“They’re tough to determine, examine and disrupt,” he stated on the information convention on Sunday.
Investigators had been additionally looking for out the place Mr. Jabbar went and what he did when he visited New Orleans in November, the second pre-attack go to that officers are conscious of. The primary go to, when he recorded the video photos from a bicycle, happened in October.
Investigators found that he had left two improvised explosive units in coolers at close by places shortly earlier than ramming his truck into the Bourbon Avenue crowd early on New 12 months’s morning. They stated he appeared to have had restricted expertise in constructing and utilizing explosives, and the units he created had been crude, however they believed a few of them might have been efficient.
Mr. Jabbar had a transmitter within the rented pickup. “We consider that the transmitter would have functioned,” Mr. Myrthil stated.
One of many coolers had been moved from the place Mr. Jabbar had positioned it, officers stated, however the individuals who moved it had been “unknowing Bourbon Avenue guests” who had no connection to Mr. Jabbar.
Each units had been deactivated by the authorities shortly after the ramming assault.
Investigators stated Mr. Jabbar had rented the pickup weeks earlier than the assault, and drove it to New Orleans from his dwelling in Texas, arriving on the afternoon of Dec. 31. Investigators discovered bomb-making supplies at a residence he had rented in New Orleans, the place he had set a fireplace simply earlier than setting off for the French Quarter. Officers stated the hearth burned itself out inside just a few hours and was already extinguished by the point firefighters arrived on the dwelling.
