At least 14 people were killed and dozens more injured during a suspected terrorist attack early Wednesday morning in New Orleans’ French Quarter. The lone perpetrator, a 42-year-old Texas man named Shamsud-Din Jabbar, intentionally rammed a pickup truck into New Year’s revelers on Bourbon Street, then crashed his truck and was killed in a shoot-out with police. He appears to have been inspired by ISIS. Below are live updates on this developing story.
The city has deployed temporary metal barricades called archers, which are designed to block vehicles, along the sidewalks.
On Thursday, officials provided new details about the timeline and the origin of the attack. They confirmed that 14 people were killed in the New Year’s Day attack, a revised lower tally that does not include the shooter. Though investigators initially looked into the possibility of co-conspirators, the FBI indicated that the suspect is believed to have acted alone at this stage of the investigation.
“We do not assess at this point that anyone else is involved in this attack, except for Shamsud-Din Jabbar, the subject you’ve already been briefed on,” said Christopher Raia, the deputy assistant director of the FBI’s counterterrorism division.
Raia said that two IEDs were discovered by FBI bomb technicians in coolers, one at the intersection of Bourbon and Orleans Streets and the other two blocks away from the scene. Investigators have obtained surveillance video of Jabbar placing the two devices. Additional reports of other IEDs were later determined to be inaccurate.
According to Raia, Jabbar is believed to have picked up the truck on December 30 in Houston and driven from the city to New Orleans on the evening of the 31st. During his travel, Jabbar posted multiple videos online professing his support for ISIS, which he joined before the summer, and provided a will and testament. Authorities have recovered three phones and two laptops connected to Jabbar, which are now being examined for evidence.
“In the first video, Jabbar explains he originally planned to harm his family and friends, but was concerned the news headlines would not focus on the ‘war between the believers and the disbelievers,’” Raia said.
Raia also said there’s “no definitive link” between the exploding Cybertruck in Las Vegas and the New Orleans attack, but acknowledged that it’s still early in the investigation.
The suspected attacker has been identified as 42-year-old Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a U.S. citizen and Army veteran from Texas. He had an ISIS flag in the truck, was dressed in military gear, and possessed an assault rifle, a handgun, and what may have been an improvised explosive device. The FBI says two other potential IEDs had been found. New Orleans police have searched every street in the French Quarter for suspicious packages.
The suspect rented the white Ford F-150 Lightning pickup he used in the attack using the car-sharing platform Turo. KUT News reports that Jabbar lived in Northwest Houston, where police visited his last known address on Wednesday:
Jabbar started a handful of realty businesses in Texas, Secretary of State records show. Two of them went defunct within the last couple of years.
In a YouTube video for one of these businesses posted four years ago, Jabbar says he was born and raised in Beaumont, Texas, and spent all his life in the state except for his time in the military. He said his 10 years in the military is “where I learned the meaning of great service and what it means to be responsive and take everything seriously, dotting i’s and crossing t’s, to make sure that things go off without a hitch.”
A Georgia State University spokesperson confirmed Jabbar attended the school from 2015 until 2017, and graduated with a B.B.A. in Computer Information Systems.
NOLA.com spoke with his landlord, who confirmed that Jabbar rented a mobile home in Houston two years ago and later told her of his plans to move to New Orleans.
The Wall Street Journal describes Jabbar’s tumultuous personal life, writing that he separated from his first wife in 2012 and that she was granted custody of their two children while he was ordered to provide health insurance and pay child support. Per the outlet, his second marriage was even more contentious, with Jabbar filing for divorce from Shaneen Jabbar in 2020 after three years:
Days later, Shaneen Jabbar was granted a restraining order, forbidding Shamsud-Din Jabbar from sending threatening or obscene messages to her or causing “bodily injury” to her or their child. The order stated that he couldn’t make late-night prank calls, cancel her credit cards and other abusive acts. Shaneen Jabbar was ordered to refrain from the same things. She couldn’t be reached for comment.
The following month, the couple moved jointly to dismiss the divorce petition. But in 2021, Shamsud-Din Jabbar again filed for divorce, and the court granted dissolution the following year. In a statement filed with the court, Jabbar portrayed himself as broke, with net income of around $7,500 and monthly expenses totaling about $8,960.
The Journal also reports that Jabbar worked as a senior solutions specialist for Deloitte and expressed interest in hunting and prayer on his internal profile:
He quoted an English translation of the Quran, from a section known as Al-Insan, or “The Man,” which discusses how faithful Muslims will be rewarded by God. “Indeed, the righteous will drink from a cup whose mixture is of Kafur, A spring of which the servants of Allah will drink,” according to a copy of his profile viewed by The Wall Street Journal. “They will make it gush forth in force. They fulfill vows and fear a Day whose evil will be widespread.”
Before the driver was identified as a native-born U.S. citizen, President-elect Trump suggested the perpetrator was a migrant and falsely linked the attack to President Biden’s border policies. On Thursday morning, Trump reiterated his claims in a Truth Social post:
With the Biden “Open Border’s Policy” I said, many times during Rallies, and elsewhere, that Radical Islamic Terrorism, and other forms of violent crime, will become so bad in America that it will become hard to even imagine or believe. That time has come, only worse than ever imagined.
In an X post on Wednesday night, Trump’s top domestic policy adviser, Stephen Miller, effectively blamed immigration itself for the attack:
CNN reports that in a series of videos he made while driving between Texas and Louisiana, Shamsud-Din Jabbar explained that he had planned to kill his family following his divorce with his ex-wife, but said he changed his mind after having several dreams that inspired him to join ISIS.
At least 14 people were killed in the attack. Here are the ones who have been identified thus far:
Kareem Badawi
The Episcopal School of Baton Rouge issued a statement confirming that Badawi, a 2024 graduate, was among those killed. Another 2024 graduate, Parker Vidrine, was also critically injured, the school said.
Martin “Tiger” Bech, 27
Bech, from Lafayette, was fatally injured in the attack and succumbed to his injuries while being treated at a local hospital, the Advocate reports. He was a star football player at St. Thomas More Catholic High School who graduated from Princeton in 2021. He reportedly worked in New York as a trader and was visiting family back home over the holidays.
Nikyra Cheyenne Dedeaux, 18
The recent high-school graduate had traveled to New Orleans from Gulfport, Mississippi, on Tuesday night with her cousin and their friend to celebrate the New Year on Bourbon Street. Her mother confirmed her death in an interview with NOLA.com:
Melissa Dedeaux’s niece told her gunfire rang out, and they began running. Cheyenne Dedeaux darted into the street and into the path of the barreling truck. She suffered horrific injuries.
Dedeaux’s friend described the harrowing attack in a separate interview.
Hubert Gauthreaux, 21
Gauthreaux’s family members confirmed he was one of the victims killed in the attack after posting messages reporting him missing earlier Wednesday.
Reggie Hunter, 37
The father of two lived in Baton Rouge but had traveled to New Orleans for New Year’s Eve along with a cousin, NOLA.com reports. Hunter was killed after being hit by the attacker’s truck. His cousin was also struck and injured. A GoFundMe has been set up for his family.
Nicole Perez, 27
Perez had a 4-year-old son and had recently been promoted to manager at a deli in Metairie, where she lived, her friend and employer told the Washington Post. She was celebrating the New Year with friends on Bourbon Street. A GoFundMe has been set up for her family.
Matthew Tenedorio, 25
According to a GoFundMe set up for his family, Tenedorio was shot and killed during the attack. He worked as an A/V technician for the Superdome.
Hours after the attack, an apparently intentional explosion of a Tesla Cybertruck rocked the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas. The driver, who may have triggered the explosion, was killed. Investigators, including from the FBI, are looking into whether or not the incident is at all linked to the New Orleans attack, but so far no evidence of that has been reported.
President Biden has announced that Jabbar posted videos on social media hours before the attack indicating he was inspired by ISIS.
The New Orleans coroner’s office has confirmed that at least 15 people were killed in the attack, and warns the number could go up again.
Surveillance footage appeared to show other people planting what might have been bombs, which promoted the FBI to announce it didn’t believe the shooter acted alone. The three men and one woman seen in those videos have now been ruled out as suspects, per multiple reports.
Set up in coolers, possibly with a remote trigger:
Louisiana governor Jeff Landry has mobilized the National Guard in response to the attack.
The suspect drove on the sidewalk and around a parked police car, which was being used as a barricade for the street:
The president-elect commented on the attack on Truth Social and suggested President Biden was to blame. It’s not clear why he believes the attacker is a migrant, but there were unconfirmed reports on right-wing media on Wednesday morning suggesting the suspect had recently crossed into the U.S. from Mexico.
Update: This appears to have been a false claim, as the suspected attacker has been identified as a U.S. citizen from Texas.
Security barriers were installed to protect Bourbon Street in 2017 as cities around the world hardened their defenses following the horrific 2016 terrorist ramming attack in the French city of Nice. But the barriers in New Orleans, which could be raised to temporarily block traffic, were in the process of being removed and replaced with new stainless steel bollards.
Police said Wednesday morning that the suspect evaded barricades during the attack, but it’s not yet clear how, or if he was able to access the street at a location where barriers were being replaced. WDSU reports:
According to a statement on the city’s website, the bollards on Bourbon Street were removed and expected to be replaced within a three to four-week window, depending on the phase of the project. The bollards were replaced with “temporary asphalt.” The bollards on Bourbon expected to be replaced were between Canal Street and St. Ann Street. Witnesses on the scene say the bollards were not in place at the time of the attack.
NOLA.com spoke with a local security official about the replacements:
The old barriers never worked too well, said Bob Simms, who oversees security initiatives for the French Quarter Management District. “They were very ineffective. The track was always full of crap; beads and doubloons and God knows what else. Not the best idea,” Simms said. “Eventually everybody realized the need to replace them. They’re in the process of doing that, but the new ones are not yet operational.”
Simms said the old barrier at the crosswalk of Canal and Bourbon streets was removed a few weeks ago. Equipment for a replacement is in place, he said.
“They’re doing it in time for the Super Bowl,” Simms said. “It’s ironic in a way.” Simms said preventing the kind of carnage that took place early Wednesday was “exactly what it was built for.”
NOLA.com reports:
Law enforcement officials and bomb squad detectives were called to 1329 Mandeville Street after firefighters doused flames that broke out at the rental, according to sources close to the investigation. Investigators believe the Airbnb was rented by the suspect in the Bourbon Street attack, sources said.
Graphic video footage of the immediate aftermath of the attack shared in a now deleted X post showed people trying to aid at least four victims who are lying motionless on the street. Several heavily armed police officers can been seen running down the street as well.
Another video shared on social media appears to show the moment in which the suspect began firing on police after crashing the truck.
The statement from the agency describes the attack as an act of terrorism.
More than a dozen blocks of the French Quarter surrounding the site of the attack remain closed off by police, and local authorities have asked people to continue to avoid the area between Canal and St. Anne streets.
At around 3:15 a.m. on Wednesday morning in New Orleans’ French Quarter, a man driving a pickup truck evaded barricades and intentionally drove at high speed into crowds of people on Bourbon Street. After crashing his truck the suspect, identified in news reports as 42-year-old Shamsud Din Jabbar, opened fire at responding police officers, who shot and killed him. At least 10 people were killed and another 35 injured in the attack, which is being investigated as an act of terrorism. Two police officers were shot but survived.
Police found what may be improvised explosive devices at the crash site but have not yet confirmed they were functional. A local reporter says he heard what sounded like police detonating the devices:
The man was “hell-bent on creating the carnage and the damage that he did” and “was trying to run over as many people as he could,” New Orleans Police Commissioner Anne Kirkpatrick told reporters.
This post has been updated.
