Shamsud-Din Jabbar: What we know about the New Orleans forward

CNN
—

In a series of videos, the man responsible for the deadly New Year’s attack in New Orleans discussed planning to kill his family and having dreams that helped inspire him to join ISIS, according to multiple officials briefed about the investigation.

Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42, who drove a pickup truck into a crowd of revelers on Bourbon Street, killing 14 people and injuring dozens more, posted five videos on Facebook in the hours and minutes leading up to the attack, Christopher Raia, the deputy assistant director of the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division, said at a news conference Thursday.

Jabbar, a Texas-born US citizen and military veteran who served in Afghanistan, referred in the videos to his divorce and how he had first planned to gather his family for a “party” with the intention of killing them, two government officials who were been briefed on the recordings said.

But Jabbar said in the videos that he changed his plans because he wanted news headlines to focus on “the war between the believers and the unbelievers,” Raia said. Jabbar stated that he had joined ISIS before this summer, Raia added.

The videos, which CNN has not reviewed, were posted on Jabbar’s Facebook page Wednesday between 1:29 a.m. and 3:02 a.m., Raia said. Jabbar also planted two improvised explosive devices in the hours before the attack, which took place around 03.15

Jabbar was killed while exchanging fire with police after he rammed the truck through the crowd in the early hours of New Year’s Day. He had an ISIS flag in the truck he was driving, according to local and federal authorities.

Now, law enforcement officials are reviewing the videos, as well as phones and laptops potentially linked to Jabbar, as they rush to piece together details of how he went from a military veteran to a suspect in a deadly spree.

Jabbar served in the Army for more than a decade, an Army spokesman told CNN on Wednesday. He served as a human resources specialist and information technology specialist on active duty between March 2007 and January 2015, and deployed to Afghanistan once from February 2009 to January 2010, the spokesman said. After leaving active duty in January 2015, Jabbar served in the Army Reserve until July 2020, when he left the service as a staff sergeant.

He was born in Beaumont, Texas, Jabbar said in a 2020 YouTube video titled “Personal Introduction,” setting himself up as a professional real estate agent based in Houston.

When he served in the military, Jabber said in a YouTube video that he had taught him “the meaning of good service and what it means to be responsive and take everything seriously, to dot the i’s and cross the t’s to make sure things run smoothly.” The video has since been taken offline. In the video, he sat next to a framed poster with the word “Discipline” in bold and near a book titled “Leadership”.

Jabbar received an associate degree from Central Texas College in 2010 and a bachelor’s degree from Georgia State University in 2017, according to an online resume. Both degrees were related to computer science and information technology. He later worked in business development and data engineering at consulting firms Deloitte and Accenture, according to the resume.

Georgia State University confirmed to CNN that Jabbar attended from 2015 to 2017 and graduated with a Bachelor of Business Administration in Computer Information Systems. Central Texas College and Accenture did not immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday.

In a statement, Deloitte said Jabbar served in “a staff-level role since being hired in 2021.” The company is assisting in the investigation and “we are shocked to learn of reports today that the individual identified as a suspect had any connection to our company,” the statement said.

In 2019, Jabbar obtained a real estate license that expired in 2023, according to Texas Real Estate Commission records. The records show he took a number of real estate courses on topics such as contract law and finance between 2018 and 2021. He is also listed in public records as previously registered or associated with several businesses in Texas and Georgia.

Jabbar had been divorced twice, court documents show. His first wife sued him in 2012 for child support shortly after he filed for divorce, and the court ordered him to pay amounts that increased over the years as his income grew. The case was dismissed in 2022.

In 2020, a Texas judge granted Jabbar’s second wife a restraining order against him during their divorce proceedings. The order mandated Jabbar to refrain from threats, physical harm or other specified conduct against his ex-wife and one of their children. It required her to avoid the same behavior. In a lawsuit, Jabbar’s ex-wife stated that the marriage had become “unsustainable due to discord or personality conflict.”

Jabbar had previously had several run-ins with the law. Harris County court records also show he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor theft between $50 and $500 in December 2002 and served nine months of “community supervision.”

In 2015, he pleaded guilty to charges related to driving under the influence while serving at Fort Bragg, a military base in North Carolina now known as Fort Liberty, according to court records. The documents revealed Jabbar was under the influence of an impairing substance in November 2014 and registered a blood alcohol level over the legal limit. They also showed he was driving with “an open container of alcoholic beverage after consuming alcohol.”

Jabbar was charged with Level 5 DWI – the least serious level of the offense in North Carolina. According to the documents, he had his license suspended, was placed on probation for 12 months, fined $200 and served 24 hours of community service.

In recent years, Jabbar appears to have struggled with his finances. In a January 2022 email filed as part of his divorce case, he wrote that he could not afford to pay a mortgage on his house, which he said was more than $27,000 past due and “at risk of foreclosure “, if his divorce settlement was further delayed. .

Jabbar also stated in the email that a company he had formed, Blue Meadow Properties, had lost about $28,000 the previous year and that other companies he formed were not worth any money. He added that he had incurred about $16,000 in credit card debt.

Jabbar rented the truck he used in the New Year attack, a Ford F-150 Lightning electric truck, on the car rental website Turo, which lets owners rent their vehicles to other people. The truck’s owner confirmed to CNN in a text message that it was rented on Turo.

Jabbar picked up the truck on Dec. 30 before driving from Houston to New Orleans the following day, Raia said. Mumtaz Bashir, a neighbor of Jabbar’s in Houston, told CNN that he saw Jabbar loading the truck on the morning of Dec. 31 and that Jabbar told him he was moving to New Orleans for a new job.

“I asked him if he needs hands to move, help him, as a neighbor, do you need help moving things around? He said, ‘I’m fine,'” Bashir said. Jabbar appeared to loading light, hand-held items into the truck, he said.

Bashir, who said he was shocked and “very saddened” by the attack, described Jabbar as a nice but quiet person who minded his own business. Bashir said he never saw any kind of “red flag” that Jabbar had been radicalized.

The rental site was also linked to an incident in Las Vegas involving a Tesla Cybertruck that exploded outside a Trump Hotel on Wednesday. The driver of the Cybertruck died in the explosion, the police said. Authorities have not confirmed the name of the dead driver and are investigating whether the incident was a terrorist attack.

“We are actively cooperating with law enforcement as they investigate both incidents,” a Turo spokesperson told CNN. “We do not believe that any of the tenants involved in the Las Vegas and New Orleans attacks had a criminal background that would have identified them as a security threat.”

“We are devastated by the violence committed in New Orleans and Las Vegas, and our prayers go out to the victims and families,” the statement said.

Turo disabled the truck connected to the New Orleans attack for rent Wednesday morning. Before it was disabled, the vehicle was listed at $105 a day, excluding taxes and fees, and was not available to rent until 6 p.m. 12:30 PM Central Time Wednesday.

CNN’s Ed Lavandera, Ashley Killough, Evan Perez and Pamela Brown contributed to this report.

Editor’s note: This story was updated to include new information about the suspect.