Investigators say that the New Orleans truck attacker had a transmitter they believe would have set off bombs he planted at two other spots in the French Quarter, but responding police killed him before he could activate it.
Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a US-born Army veteran, killed 14 people and injured 35 more early New Year’s morning when he drove around a police barricade on Bourbon Street and drove down the sidewalk. He got out of his rented truck and opened fire on police officers, who promptly shot him dead, after crashing the truck.
The FBI said that Jabbar left his first homemade bomb in a cooler at Bourbon Street and St. Peters Street just before 2 a.m. Wednesday, about an hour and 15 minutes before the ramming attack, the Times-Picayune reported. “Unknowing Bourbon Street visitors” moved that cooler a block away to Orleans Street, investigators said.
Jabbar set the second bomb, in a “bucket-style cooler,” at Bourbon and Toulouse Streets shortly before 2:30 a.m., the FBI said.
Local police initially said they believed he had help setting those bombs, but the FBI said after viewing surveillance footage that the people seen were curious onlookers unconnected with the killer.
Investigators said there were also homemade bombs in the truck along with the transmitter.
“We believe that the transmitter would have functioned and would have worked were it not for the actions of those New Orleans police officers,” FBI Special Agent in Charge Lyonel Myrthil told reporters.
But Joshua Jackson, the special agent in charge of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives field office in New Orleans, said that Jabbar’s choice of a detonator likely played a role in the bombs not going off. He used a hobby switch or electronic match, Jackson said, as opposed to a more sophisticated professional detonator, which would have been much harder to obtain, ABC News reported.
“He didn’t use the right or correct device to set it off, and that is just indicative of his inexperience and lack of understanding how that material might be set off,” Jackson said.
Previous trips to New Orleans
The FBI also said that Jabbar made at least two previous trips to New Orleans — on October 30 and November 10 — and wore a pair of Meta glasses to records a bicycle ride through the French Quarter on the first trip. Myrrhil said that he was also wearing Meta glasses during the attack but did not record the attack or try to livestream it.
Jabbar arrived in New Orleans for the attack late on December 31 and was seen unloading his rental truck at an Airbnb in the St. Roch neighborhood. Jackson said he left the rental shortly after midnight and poured gasoline in a linen closet and throughout the unit and set it on fire, apparently hoping to destroy any evidence he left behind.
But the fire smothered itself, and firefighters completed the extinguishing of the blaze without major damage, and investigators found explosive materials and other evidence he left behind.
Investigators believe Jabbar built his bombs at his Houston home, where a search located bomb-making materials, including RDX explosive material similar to that used in his planted bombs.
“The FBI lab will conduct additional tests on the material, which we believe will turn out to be commonly found explosives right here in the United States,” Jackson said.
No evidence of accomplices
After learning the people seen on video near Jabbar’s bombs were not accomplices, investigators have continued to search through Jabbar’s contacts.
“We have not seen any indications of an accomplice in the U.S., but we are still looking into potential associates in the U.S. and outside our borders,” Christopher Raia, FBI deputy assistant director from the counterterrorism division, said.
Raia said investigators are looking into who he may have met with during a trip to Egypt in June 2023 and a subsequent trip to Canada the following month. So far, he said, they’ve found no evidence that he received help from Islamic State.
For the latest true crime and justice news, subscribe to the ‘Crime Stories with Nancy Grace’ podcast.
[Featured image: A black flag with white lettering lies on the ground rolled up behind a pickup truck that a man drove into a crowd on Bourbon Street in New Orleans on New Year’s morning. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)]
