Police investigate motives for deadly truck attack in New Orleans by Reuters

Written by Brian Thevenot

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) – Investigators in New Orleans on Thursday searched for the motive that led a U.S. Army veteran to unfurl an Islamic State flag from his truck and plow into a crowd of New Year’s revelers, killing 15 people and wounding 30 others before he was killed in the car. Shootout. With the police.

The investigation focused on whether the suspect, Shamsuddin Jabbar, 42, an American citizen from Texas who once served in Afghanistan, helped plan the deadly attack on the city that will host the NFL next month.

FBI officials said they are also looking for any connection between the deadly attack and a separate incident on Wednesday, in which a Tesla (NASDAQ:) e-truck exploded outside the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas, just weeks before President-elect Donald Trump’s return. To the White House on January 20.

The New Orleans attack injured about 30 other people, including two police officers who were shot by the suspect, just three hours into the new year in the historic French Quarter.

The victims included the mother of a 4-year-old who had just moved into a new apartment after receiving a promotion at work, a financial employee in New York, an accomplished student athlete who was visiting his home for the holidays, and an 18-year-old. -An old aspiring nurse from Mississippi.

Witnesses described the horrific scene.

“There were people everywhere,” Kimberly Strickland of Mobile, Alabama, said in an interview. “I just heard this squealing and the engine revving and this huge powerful impact and then people screaming and debris – just metal – the sound of grinding metal and bodies.”

At the same time, the authorities pledged to continue searching for any evidence that Jabbar had accomplices.

A New Year’s Day tradition — the college football classic known as the Sugar Bowl — has been rescheduled for Thursday afternoon. Kickoff for the game between Notre Dame and Georgia was delayed for nearly 24 hours while police swept parts of the city looking for possible explosive devices and swarmed neighborhoods looking for clues.

The city will also host the NFL Super Bowl on February 9.

The FBI said police found weapons and a possible explosive device in the car, while two possible explosive devices were found in the French Quarter and recovered.

ISIS flag

The FBI said an ISIS flag was attached to a prominent employee of the rental car’s trailer hitch, prompting an investigation into possible ties to terrorist organizations.

US President Joe Biden condemned what he described as a “shameful” act, and said that investigators were examining whether there might be a connection to the Tesla truck fire outside the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas. The president and the FBI said that so far there is no evidence linking the two events.

Public records showed that Jabbar worked in real estate in Houston. In a promotional video posted four years ago, Jabbar described himself as born and raised in Beaumont, a city about 80 miles (130 kilometers) east of Houston.

An Army spokesman said Jabbar was in the regular Army from March 2007 until January 2015 and then in the Army Reserve from January 2015 until July 2020. He was deployed to Afghanistan from February 2009 to January 2010 and attained the rank of staff sergeant at the end of his service.

CNN, citing officials familiar with the investigation, said the suspect recorded videos in which he mentioned his dreams of joining ISIS and once considered killing his family after the divorce.

ISIS – also called the Islamic State or ISIS – is a militant Islamist group that once imposed a reign of terror on millions of people in Iraq and Syria until it collapsed after a sustained military campaign by the US-led coalition.

Experts say that although it has been weakened at the field level, it has continued to recruit sympathizers online.

Police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick said: “This is not just an act of terrorism, it is evil.”