A Texas man who expressed support for the Islamic State group before he drove into a crowd in New Orleans on New Year’s Day, killing 14 people, appears to have acted alone, an FBI official said Thursday, as the city reopened Bourbon Street after the attack and hosted thousands of fans for the Sugar Bowl.
Investigators have found “no definitive link” between the attack and the explosion of a Tesla Cybertruck hours later that wounded at least seven people outside a Trump hotel in Las Vegas, according to the FBI official, Christopher Raia, the deputy assistant director of the bureau’s counterterrorism division.
The driver of the Cybertruck was identified Thursday as an Army master sergeant from Colorado who had been on leave from active duty and had shot himself in the head just before the explosion. Raia cautioned that investigators were early in their inquiry and had not ruled anything out.
Raia said that based on hundreds of interviews and reviews of phone calls, social media accounts and electronic devices linked to the Texas man who carried out the attack in New Orleans, investigators no longer believed, as they said Wednesday, that he had co-conspirators.
“We’re confident, at this point, that there are no accomplices,” Raia said at a news conference in New Orleans. Investigators have identified the man, who was killed in a shootout with police, as Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42, a U.S. citizen from Texas.
Jabbar, who served eight years in the U.S. Army and deployed to Afghanistan, had an Islamic State flag affixed to the rented Ford pickup truck that he used in the attack and was “100% inspired by ISIS,” Raia said, using another name for the Islamic State group.
Raia said that Jabbar picked up the truck in Houston on Dec. 30 and drove to New Orleans on the evening of Dec. 31.
Jabbar then posted five videos on Facebook in which he explained that he “originally planned to harm his family and friends, but was concerned that news headlines would not focus” on what he called the “war between the believers and the disbelievers,” Raia said.
“Additionally, he stated that he had joined ISIS before the summer,” Raia said.
He did not say if Jabbar had any direct contact with the group. But he said investigators were digging into Jabbar’s social media history and interviewing those who knew him, hoping to learn more about his path to radicalization.
Surveillance videos showed Jabbar placing two coolers containing explosive devices at two locations in the French Quarter before the attack. One was at the corner of Bourbon and Orleans streets and another was about two blocks away.
President Joe Biden, speaking at the White House on Thursday, said that Jabbar had a remote detonator in his truck to set off the explosives. He said officials were “actively investigating any foreign or domestic contacts and connections that could possibly be relevant to the attack.”
The explosives in the coolers were later rendered safe. Reports of other explosives found around the city turned out to be false alarms, Raia said.
Jabbar carried out the attack around 3:15 a.m. local time, avoiding a police car parked on Bourbon Street and plowing into a crowd of people celebrating the new year. In addition to the 14 people who were killed, dozens of others were wounded.
A security assessment prepared in late 2019 warned that Bourbon Street was vulnerable to a terrorist attack by vehicle. The assessment, prepared by Interfor International, a private security consulting firm, for the agency that manages the French Quarter, warned that the system of security bollards designed to block vehicles from entering Bourbon Street “does not appear to work.”
The report recommended that the barriers be fixed immediately, saying that a terrorist attack was “highly possible.” The agency did not immediately respond to a phone call seeking comment.
According to a notice on the city’s website, construction work to remove old bollards and install new, stainless-steel replacements began in November and was scheduled to continue into February, when New Orleans plans to host the Super Bowl.
After the attack, investigators recovered three phones linked to Jabbar and two laptops at a nearby home that caught fire, Raia said.
Investigators believe that the fire started after Jabbar died and that it could have been ignited by a timed device, pressure cookers filled with gasoline that were left on a stove or something else, according to Joshua Jackson, special agent in charge of the New Orleans field division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Gov. Jeff Landry of Louisiana said more than 1,000 law enforcement agents were working on the investigation into the attack, which he likened to a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle.
The mood in the city was more somber than usual even as the Sugar Bowl, a New Orleans tradition since 1935, got underway at the Superdome, a day after it was postponed because of the attack.
About 25 minutes before kickoff, the stadium held a moment of silence to honor the victims of the attack. They included a woman on the cusp of starting her studies to become a nurse, a father of two who was spending time with his cousin and a former Princeton University football player.
Outside the stadium, the revelry of a major college football game — cups of beer, vendors hawking food and shouts of “Go Dawgs” from University of Georgia fans — contrasted with a large SWAT truck, a helicopter overhead and officers dressed in military gear carrying large rifles.
Local officials said they remained confident in the city’s ability to host major public events.
New Orleans is “ready to continue to host large-scale events in our city because we are built to host at every single turn,” Mayor LaToya Cantrell said.
She said she gave the go-ahead to clean up Bourbon Street at 2 a.m. Thursday. By Thursday afternoon, the street, lined with bars, music halls and ornate wrought-iron balconies, was reopened to tourists, who were strolling up and down. A brass band played a block from a makeshift memorial, drawing crowds of people who recorded on their phones and danced.
Inside Daiquiris Delight Shop, a Bourbon Street bar, 15 flavors were swirling in frozen-drink machines as the co-owner, Charles Wandfluh, 56, told customers that the attacker’s truck had come to a stop right outside the bar. “I don’t know that the magnitude of the whole thing really sets in yet,” he said.
Some visitors said the attack had only made them more determined to carry on with life in New Orleans and to attend the Sugar Bowl game between Notre Dame and the University of Georgia.
“What they want is for us to not have a celebration,” said Sean Taggart, 31, a Notre Dame fan who was visiting from Texas. “They want us to not be who we are.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
© 2025 The New York Times Company