AP Photo/Gerald Herbert
The man accused of plowing into a crowd in the heart of New Orleans in an ISIS-inspired attack that killed 15 people acted alone, an FBI official said Thursday.
Law enforcement officials identified the suspect in the attack as Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar, a 42-year-old US Army veteran, and have described it as a premeditated act of terrorism.
Officials say he killed 14 people and injured at least 35 more others after driving into the crowd with a rented truck early on New Year's Day and started shooting before being killed in a shootout with police.
At a press conference Thursday, Christopher Raia, an FBI counterterrorism official involved in the investigation, walked back earlier claims that other people may have assisted Jabbar with the attack.
He said officials have since reviewed hundreds of hours of surveillance footage and other records, and believe Jabbar acted alone.
"We do not assess, at this point, that anyone else has been involved in this attack except for Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar," Raia said at the New Orleans press conference.
Raia also said investigators have not found any links between the New Orleans attack and a Cybertruck explosion in Las Vegas outside a Trump hotel, while cautioning the investigations into each event were still in their early stages. Both trucks were rented through the vehicle-sharing app Turo, and officials say the perpetrator in the Las Vegas attack was an active-duty Army soldier.
"At this point, there's is no definitive link between the attack here in New Orleans and the one in Las Vegas," Raia said.
New Orleans was still reeling Thursday after the driver, later identified as Jabbar, drove a rented Ford pickup truck through the crowd on Bourbon Street at about 3:15 a.m. on New Year's Day.
Several improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, were also found near the scene of the attack. An ISIS flag was found in the vehicle's trunk, according to Raia.
Raia said that authorities initially believed other people may have been involved in the attack because of witnesses who said they saw people setting down coolers containing the IEDs.
But surveillance footage showed that Jabbar set down coolers containing two IEDs himself, Raia said. According to Raia, footage showed other people later "checking out" the coolers, but they did not seem to have any role in the attack. Reports of additional IEDs could not be substantiated, Raia said.
Officials had also earlier said that a fire in a New Orleans house, which was rented from Airbnb, may have been where the IEDs were assembled. But authorities said at Thursday's press conference that they now believe the fire is likely unrelated to the attack.
Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry said "information changes" as the investigation continues.
"No one dumps a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle and solves it in five seconds," he said at the press conference Thursday.
Jabbar's criminal record, obtained from the Texas Department of Public Safety and viewed by Business Insider, shows two prior arrests in 2002 and 2005. The first was for theft, while the other was for driving with an invalid license. Both were classified as misdemeanors.
At Thursday's press conference, Raia said Jabbar rented the Ford truck in Houston on December 30 and headed to New Orleans on December 31.
He said Jabbar made a series of Facebook posts during his journey expressing support for ISIS and posting a last will and testament.
Raia also said that investigators believe Jabbar joined ISIS before this past summer.
In a statement to Business Insider, the car-sharing app Turo said Jabbar used its service to rent the truck.
"We are heartbroken to learn that one of our host's vehicles was involved in this awful incident," the statement reads. "We are actively partnering with the FBI. We are not currently aware of anything in this guest's background that would have identified him as a trust and safety threat to us at the time of the reservation."
Starting Wednesday evening, Texas authorities performed a search of a location in Houston believed to be linked to Jabbar, the FBI said.
At Thursday's press conference, officials said they had obtained two laptops and three phones connected to Jabbar, which they have been examining.
The agency said it's made no arrests but had deployed specialized personnel, including a SWAT team, crisis negotiators, and a bomb squad, to the Houston location.
The search finished early Thursday, with the agency saying that it could not release more information, but that "there is no threat to residents in that area."
Superintendent Anne E. Kirkpatrick of the New Orleans Police Department said during an earlier press conference that a man drove a pickup truck down Bourbon Street "at a very fast pace." Kirkpatrick said the man drove into the crowd intentionally.
She also said the driver shot two police officers, who she said were in stable condition.
Kirkpatrick said it appeared that most of those injured were locals rather than tourists.
AP Photo/Gerald Herbert
NOLA Ready, the city's emergency preparedness campaign, had initially said there was "a mass casualty incident involving a vehicle that drove into a large crowd on Canal and Bourbon Street."
Kevin Garcia, a 22-year-old who was present at the time, told CNN, "All I seen was a truck slamming into everyone on the left side of Bourbon sidewalk."
He said that "a body came flying at me," and that he heard gunshots.
One witness told CBS that a driver plowed into the crowd on Bourbon Street at high speed and that the driver got out and started firing a weapon, with the police firing back.
Gov. Jeff Landry of Louisiana said on X on Wednesday that a "horrific act of violence took place on Bourbon Street earlier this morning."
"Please join Sharon and I in praying for all the victims and first responders on scene," he wrote, referring to his wife. "I urge all near the scene to avoid the area."
Bourbon Street, in the city's French Quarter, is a famous party destination.
Some streets in and around the French Quarter were due to be closed for New Year's celebrations, with Canal Street expected to stay open unless traffic got too bad, the local outlet Fox 8 WVUE-TV reported.
As a result of the attack, the Sugar Bowl football game between the University of Georgia and the University of Notre Dame was postponed from Wednesday night to Thursday afternoon.
Local officials tried to assure the public that the city was now safe, with additional law enforcement deployed everywhere.
"The city of New Orleans is not only ready for game day today but also to host large-scale events," New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell said Thursday.
