A U.S. Army veteran from Texas who was employed by Deloitte is the suspect in a bloody New Year’s Day attack in New Orleans that killed at least 15 people and injured 30 more.
Federal investigators identified Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42, as the man who intentionally rammed a rented pickup into revelers around 3:15 a.m. on Bourbon Street as people were ringing in the new year.
He died in a shootout with police. Two officers were shot and were stable, officials said.
Federal and local officials are working to uncover a motive behind the attack and determine whether Jabbar acted alone or had help.
“This is not just an act of terrorism. This is evil,” Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick said.
The carnage unfolded when Jabbar drove onto a sidewalk, bypassing a police vehicle that had been parked to block cars from pedestrians celebrating on crowded Bourbon Street, officials told reporters Wednesday afternoon.
Jabbar served in the Army on active duty from 2006 to 2015, then in the Army Reserve from 2015 to 2020, according to three U.S. defense officials.
He was deployed to Afghanistan in 2009 and was an administrative clerk. He was a staff sergeant in 2020 when he was honorably discharged.
Separately, he tried to enlist in the Navy in 2004 but never shipped out or began training, a spokesperson said.
Texas criminal records show that Jabbar was charged in 2002 with misdemeanor theft and in 2005 with driving with an invalid license.
He attended Georgia State University from 2015 to 2017 and graduated with a BBA in computer information systems, a university spokesperson said.
Jabbar had a black ISIS flag affixed to the hitch of the Ford F-150 Lightning truck.
The car-sharing marketplace Turo said the vehicle was rented from its company.
In an address to the nation, President Joe Biden said Jabbar posted videos to social media “indicating he was inspired by ISIS, expressing a desire to kill.”
A childhood friend said Jabbar’s alleged actions on Wednesday don’t at all align with the person he knew growing up in Beaumont, Texas.
“What happened today was a complete 180 of anything I ever knew about him,” said Chris Pousson, who last spoke with Jabbar, who he called “Sham,” sometime in 2017 in 2018. “He was very quiet, very reserved, smart, articulate.”
Civil records show Jabbar was married twice, with his first marriage ending in 2012 and his second in 2022.