New Orleans attack latest: Suspect's travel to Egypt under investigation
Fourteen people were killed in the New Year's Day attack on Bourbon Street.
The suspect in the truck attack that killed 14 and injured dozens in New Orleans on New Year's had traveled to Egypt in 2023 for about a month, his half-brother told ABC News.
Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a 42-year-old Army veteran and U.S.-born citizen from Texas, went to Egypt alone and told his family he was going "because it was cheap and beautiful," his half-brother, 24-year-old Abdur Jabbar, said.
Shamsud-Din Jabbar's foreign travel is a part of the ongoing investigation, law enforcement officials told ABC News.
Investigators are working to determine what he did during his travel in Egypt, why he went and who he interacted with while there, multiple sources said. Critical to the probe is whether he had been radicalized prior to the travel or if the travel marked the start of his radicalization.
"This next most important phase of the investigation is to find out how that radicalization happened and if it happened on that trip," Orleans Parish District Attorney Jason Williams told ABC News.
Early on New Year's Day, Shamsud-Din Jabbar drove a pickup truck onto a sidewalk and around a parked police car serving as a barricade to plow into pedestrians over a three-block stretch on Bourbon Street, police said. He then exited the damaged vehicle armed with an assault rifle and opened fire on police officers, law enforcement said. Officers returned fire, killing him.
Before the deadly ramming, surveillance footage showed Jabbar placing two improvised explosive devices in coolers in the Bourbon Street area, investigators said. He had a remote detonator in the truck to set off the two device, but both devices were rendered safe, officials said.
Inside one of the coolers, investigators found a device consisting of a steel pipe, nails and a relatively rare explosive chemical, a senior law enforcement official told ABC News on Friday. The remote detonation capability apparently failed to work, the official said.
NBC News was the first to report on the rare chemical.
A search of Jabbar's home in Houston also turned up bomb-making materials, sources confirmed to ABC News on Thursday. The items found were also referred to as "precursor chemicals" by agents in the field, sources said.
Officials said the first 24 hours after the ramming attack were occupied by a feverish effort to determine whether there were additional suspects on the loose or if Shamsud-Din Jabbar worked with accomplices. Since Thursday, investigators have been focused on piecing together his path to radicalization and the events that led up to his decision to attack Bourbon Street.
Jabbar posted several videos online hours before the attack "proclaiming his support for ISIS" and mentioning he joined ISIS before this summer, according to the FBI.
The FBI and Department of Homeland Security issued a joint intelligence bulletin warning the nation's 18,000 law-enforcement agencies about potential copycats, ABC News learned. The bulletin was sent out of an abundance of caution to sensitize law enforcement around the country to be on the lookout for any activity pointing to the use of vehicles as a method to inflict mass casualties, sources told ABC News.
"We advise federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial government and law enforcement officials and private sector security partners to remain vigilant of potential copycat or retaliatory attacks inspired by this attack and other recent, lethal vehicle-ramming incidents across the globe," the bulletin said.
The bulletin notes that ISIS has been promoting the use of vehicles as a terrorism weapon since around 2014.
ISIS has ramped up calls for its supporters to launch low-tech, mass casualty ramming attacks in recent months, sources told ABC News, especially since the most recent Israel-Hamas conflict began in October 2023.
The bulletin stated that Shamsud-Din Jabbar was inspired by ISIS but that there remains no evidence of any co-conspirators. A senior law-enforcement official told ABC News that there is so far no sign of ISIS claiming responsibility for the New Orleans attack.
"Law enforcement should be aware that in many cases attackers have conducted vehicle-ramming attacks with secondary weapons and may continue the attack with edged weapons, firearms, or IEDs after the vehicle has stopped," the bulletin said. The tactic could be "attractive" for foreign terrorist organizations and other actors due to its low complexity threshold, the warning said.
An intelligence bulletin from the New York Police Department obtained by ABC News indicated that ISIS supporters did celebrate the attack online. Violent extremists, the bulletin said, "continue to view densely populated walkways, parades, mass gatherings and other outdoor events along streets, especially during holidays, as vulnerable targets of opportunity."
"This enduring threat underscores the criticality of pre-staged blocker cars and the deployment of other effectively configured countermeasures including heavy block, barriers and bollards," it added.
Law enforcement cleared and reopened Bourbon Street on Thursday as the investigation continued. New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell said authorities had the "confidence" to reopen the area to the public ahead of the Sugar Bowl on Thursday afternoon, which was initially scheduled for Wednesday but postponed in the wake of the attack.
"I want to reassure the public that the city of New Orleans is not only ready for game day today, but we're ready to continue to host large-scale events in our city," she said. "Our hearts and prayers continue to go out to the victims' families," Cantrell added.
President Biden and first lady Jill Biden will head to New Orleans on Monday to meet with the families and community members, the White House said. Biden said Friday that he's spoken with victims' families.
There is no apparent direct connection between the New Orleans attack and Wednesday's Tesla Cybertruck explosion outside the Trump International Hotel Las Vegas, which is also being investigated as a possible act of terror, the FBI said Thursday.
