THE DAILY SIGNAL | Published January 3, 2025
Authorities are slowly learning more about what motivated 42-year-old Shamsud-Din Jabbar to turn a truck into a weapon on Bourbon Street in New Orleans early Wednesday morning.
The act of terror left 15 people dead and another 35 injured. The FBI says Jabbar acted alone and, despite being a military veteran, was inspired by ISIS. An ISIS flag was found in the truck Jabbar was driving and in a post on Facebook, Jabbar admitted to joining ISIS.
Cully Stimson, Heritage Foundation senior legal fellow and policy expert in crime control, national security, immigration, and homeland security, joins “The Daily Signal Podcast Bonus Edition” to discuss the FBI’s investigation into the attack. Stimson also addresses the likelihood the attack was linked with the explosion of a Cybertruck outside one of President-elect Donald Trump’s hotels in Las Vegas.
Listen to the podcast below or read the lightly edited transcript.
Virginia Allen: The FBI is searching for answers following a terrorist attack in New Orleans that left 15 people dead.
Joining me now to discuss is Cully Stimson. He serves as a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation. He’s also an expert in homeland security, crime prevention, and immigration. Cully, welcome back to “The Daily Signal Podcast.”
Cully Stimson: Great to be with you.
Allen: Let’s talk about what we know about this man who has been found to have been driving the vehicle. He was found to have an ISIS flag in his truck, but his past in many ways is pretty normal. He served in our military, he worked in corporate America. He had a family, though he was divorced. How does someone like that become radicalized?
Stimson: We don’t know with respect to this guy, but you’re right, he was born in Beaumont, Texas. He went into the Army. He was the IT guy, among other jobs. He then got out, went to corporate America, was a real estate guy, seemed to have a normal life.
But if you look at the pictures of him from the time he was in the Army where he was squared away and had a high and tight and then corporate America where he looked like a corporate dude, and then all of a sudden he gets this typical jihadi beard and the look in his eyes changed. Take a look at that. I mean, I’ve been around terrorists. I’ve been around the worst of the worst, including Khalid Sheik Mohammed. They got a look.
And so, we don’t know what ISIS or followers of ISIS or what he was drawn to about ISIS, but when you think about people like him or the Fort Hood shooter or the shooter at Pensacola, or even Bradley Manning, why he was willing to betray his country and take it upon himself to break into databases and provide the biggest amount of intelligence trove to WikiLeaks, who then provided it to our enemy, which resulted in people killed and billions of dollars—we just don’t know why people do these things.
The irony here, Virginia, among many ironies, is on the 6th of December, 2024, the FBI and the CIA and the National Counterterrorism Center put out a memo. It’s unclassified and it warns about potential for upcoming lone-person attacks by either homegrown terrorists or terrorist-inspired people in the United States who will go after Americans at large events with simple means, including ramming people with a vehicle. So that is in their own memo to the field.
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SOURCE: www.dailysignal.com
RELATED: Who was Shamsud-Din Jabbar, the New Orleans truck attack suspect?
The suspect in the car-ramming attack in New Orleans has been identified as a US military veteran from Texas.
Members of the National Guard and police look on at a blocked off street, a block from Bourbon Street, after at least 15 people were killed during an attack early in the morning on January 1, 2025 in New Orleans, Louisiana. [Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP]
AL JAZEERA | Published January 3, 2025
At least 15 people were killed and dozens wounded after a man, identified by the FBI as a United States military veteran, ploughed a pick-up truck into a crowd of New Year’s revellers on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, US.
The suspect, who was killed in a police shootout, has been identified as Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a US citizen from Texas who served in the military in Afghanistan.
The FBI is investigating the incident as an act of “terrorism” and initially said it did not believe the driver had acted alone in the attack on one of the country’s top tourist destinations. However, it later changed this stance, when Christopher Raia, FBI assistant director, said it had ruled out other suspects after reviewing CCTV footage from the city’s French Quarter.
On Thursday, police also said they were investigating a possible link between this incident and the explosion of a Tesla Cybertruck on Wednesday outside the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas, which killed one person and injured several others.
The suspect in that case is now believed to have been an active-duty soldier, named Matthew Livelsberger – a highly decorated Green Beret who had served in Afghanistan, Ukraine and Tajikistan among other postings.
Here’s what we know about the incident in New Orleans, the suspect, and the latest on the ground.
What happened in New Orleans and when?
- At about 3:15am (09:15 GMT) on Wednesday, a rented Ford F-150 pick-up truck drove at high speed into a crowd of New Year’s revellers in New Orleans, according to local police.
- New Orleans Police Department Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick said the driver swerved around barricades and was driving at “very high speed” and in a “very intentional” manner.
- “This man was trying to run over as many people as he possibly could,” Kirkpatrick told reporters. “He was hell-bent on creating the carnage and the damage that he did,” she added.
- After the car stopped, the driver jumped out of the vehicle and fired at responding officers, who shot back and killed him.
- The FBI said they found an explosive device at the site, but are working to confirm if it is viable or not.
- Jabbar appears to have rented the F-150 Lightning electric truck from the car rental website Turo, according to broadcaster CNN.
- Authorities found that the same rental website was linked to an incident on Wednesday in Las Vegas, where a Tesla Cybertruck exploded outside a Trump hotel. It’s not clear if the two incidents are related
Who is the suspect?
The FBI identified the suspect as 42-year-old Jabbar, who served in the US military between 2007 and 2020. He also deployed to Afghanistan from February 2009 to January 2010.
He graduated from Georgia State University in 2017 earning a degree in computer information systems.
The FBI said an ISIL (ISIS) flag was found in the vehicle used in the attack. The bureau is trying to determine if Jabbar was associated with any “terrorist” organisations.
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SOURCE: www.aljazeera.com
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