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The New Year’s Eve attack in New Orleans was a “terrorist act” unrelated to the explosion of a Tesla Cybertruck in Las Vegas just hours later, according to the FBI.
While the investigation into the New Orleans attack is in its early stages, the FBI said it believed the suspected gunman, US Army veteran Shamsud-Din Jabbar, acted alone.
“This was a terrorist act. It was a premeditated and evil act,” FBI Deputy Assistant Director Christopher Raia said Thursday. “We are confident at this point that there is no accomplice (sic).”
Raia added that “at this point, there is no definitive link between the attack here in New Orleans and the one in Las Vegas,” though he said the FBI was not ruling anything out.
Fourteen people were killed and 35 injured when a man drove a truck into a large crowd and opened fire in the heart of New Orleans in the early hours of the New Year.
The FBI said an ISIS flag was found on the truck and the agency was investigating the suspect’s possible ties to terrorist organizations. Jabbar was killed in a shootout with police, bringing the death toll to 15.
Two “functional” improvised explosive devices were later found in refrigerators in the heart of the city’s historic French Quarter, Raia said. He added that both IEDs were “safe” at the scene.
Three phones and two laptops linked to Jabbar have been recovered from searches and authorities are examining them for possible clues.
Investigators said they were beginning to piece together a timeline of the attack. Jabbar had picked up the rented Ford F-150 truck in Houston, Texas, on Dec. 30, then headed east to New Orleans the next day.
In Facebook videos posted along the way, Jabbar announced his support for ISIS and said he had originally planned to target family and friends but “was worried that the headlines would not focus on the fight between believers and non-believers.” , said Raia.
The FBI added that the attacker claimed to have joined ISIS over the summer and produced a will.
Just hours after the attack in New Orleans, a Tesla Cybertruck exploded outside the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas. President Joe Biden had said Wednesday night that authorities were investigating whether he was connected to the New Orleans attack.
Jabbar, a 42-year-old U.S. citizen from Texas, was a U.S. Army veteran who worked at consulting firm Deloitte, where he had a “staff-level role” since 2021, the company said Thursday.
“We are outraged by this shameful and senseless act of violence and are doing everything we can to assist the authorities in their investigation,” he added.
The military said Jabbar had served as a human resources and information technology specialist between 2007 and 2020. He was deployed to Afghanistan between February 2009 and January 2010.
The military also confirmed that the driver of the Cybertruck that exploded in Las Vegas, Matthew Alan Livelsberger, was an active-duty US soldier. At the time of his death, the master sergeant was assigned to the US Army Special Operations Command and was on approved leave.
Livelsberger began his military career in 2006 and served on active duty until 2011 before transferring to the National Guard, where he served for about a year. After a brief stint in the Army Reserve, he joined active duty in late 2012.
The FBI said Thursday it was searching a Colorado Springs residence it believed was connected to the Las Vegas shooting.
Additional reporting by Felicia Schwartz in Washington
