NEW ORLEANS ATTACK

NPR  - A pickup truck plowed into a crowd on New Orleans’ Bourbon Street early on New Year’s Day, killing at least 15 people and injuring dozens more. The driver, identified as Shamsud-Din Jabbar, was killed in a gunfire exchange with police. The FBI is investigating the attack as an act of terrorism. Jabbar is believed to have not acted alone. Here’s what we know so far.

The truck Jabbar was driving had an ISIS flag sticker on it, Drew Hawkins with the Gulf States Newsroom, an NPR network station, tells Up First. President Biden stated last night that law enforcement is looking for possible co-conspirators or associations. Officials say Jabbar got past police because the automatic bollards installed on the street over a decade ago haven’t worked in a while. The bollards go up and down automatically and block the street. Police cruisers parked at the intersection to prevent traffic from entering, but the suspect drove around and began speeding down the road. Many in the city are angry this happened and are grappling with shock. Jabbar’s last known address has been traced to a neighborhood in northwest Houston by reporters from Houston Public, Lauren McGaughy with The Texas Newsroom says. He served in the military from 2007 to 2015 before switching to the reserves. A U.S. official says Jabbar was honorably discharged but had disciplinary problems while in the military.

A Telsa Cybertruck exploded in front of a Trump hotel in Las Vegas yesterday, killing the driver and injuring at least seven people. A joint task force is investigating the blast but has not yet said if it was an act of terror. Las Vegas police say they’re looking at any possible connections between the explosion of the Cybertruck and yesterday’s attack in New Orleans. Las Vegas police say the Cybertruck, which was rented, pulled into the valet parking area around 8:40 a.m., sat there for around 15 to 20 seconds and then began to smoke. NPR’s Frank Langfitt says fireworks then shot out of the vehicle, and it caught on fire. Investigators have pointed out similarities between the two attacks: Both happened on the same day in tourist cities, and both vehicles were rented through an app called Turo. The attacks have not been linked to each other.

WCVB, Boston  -  Experts said one of the missing security measures on Bourbon Street in the French Quarter are the steel columns, which are known as bollards. Bollards act as a shield to temporarily prevent vehicles from entering an area. They were being replaced, ahead of the Super Bowl next month.

Police cars were stationed there, in place of the bollards, but video shows the terrorist driving around the blockade.

Ed Davis was the Boston police commissioner during the [Boston] marathon bombings. He said the decision to use police cruisers was unacceptable, especially because it happened days after an attack at a Christmas market in German that killed five people and injured more than 200 others.

"There are serious questions about the preparation for a potential attack, especially just after what happened in Germany. We pay attention to what's happening across the world and the same type of attack happened at a Christmas celebration there," Davis said. In Boston, dump trucks and plows are a common sight during large events - including the Boston Marathon - to block roads and protect attendees.

WCVB -    The FBI confirmed that Jabbar was an Army veteran.  Jabbar enlisted in the Army in March 2007, working in both human resources and information technology. He deployed to Afghanistan from February 2009 to January 2010, then transferred into the U.S. Army Reserve in 2015, the service said in a statement. Jabbar served until July 2020, leaving the military with the rank of staff sergeant.

According to the FBI, Jabbar was driving a Ford pickup truck with a Texas tag. The FBI believes that Jabbar rented the truck. However, they are working to confirm how he got the vehicle.

While addressing the nation from Camp David, President Joe Biden said the New Orleans attacker had posted video on social media indicating the Islamic State group inspired him...

Multiple law enforcement sources told the Houston Chronicle that Jabbar was from the Houston area and reported public records that listed multiple addresses for him in the region.

The Chronicle reported that police responded to one of those addresses, describing it as "a gated street teeming with loose chickens, ducks and goats outside several mobile homes. 

NBC News -   Texas criminal records show that Jabbar was charged in 2002 with misdemeanor theft and in 2005 with driving with an invalid license.He attended Georgia State University from 2015 to 2017 and graduated with a BBA in computer information systems, a university spokesperson said...

Civil records show Jabbar was married twice, with his first marriage ending in 2012 and his second in 2022.

In 2020, Jabber’s second wife filed a motion for a temporary restraining order, according to public records.  The order barred both parties from “intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly causing bodily injury to the other party or to a child of either party” or “threatening the other party or a child of either party with imminent bodily injury.”  A month later, the divorce case was dismissed, and a new divorce petition was filed in 2021. Jabbar and his ex-wife were granted joint custody of their child in 2022.

Daily Beast -    He struggled financially and reportedly communicated this to his second wife’s lawyer. “I cannot afford the house payment,” he wrote to the attorney in 2022, according to the New York Times. “It is past due in excess of $27,000 and in danger of foreclosure if we delay settling the divorce.”

Jabbar had also been ordered to pay his first wife spousal support and had a mortgage, meaning his monthly expenses often exceeded his income.

While working as a consultant, Jabbar was trying to earn money in real estate on the side. But his business was losing money and he was racking up tens of thousands of dollars in credit card and other debts. He let his real estate license expire in early 2023.

In a 2015 interview with Georgia State University’s student paper, Jabbar had expressed frustration with life after the military. He said that the Department of Veterans Affairs had made it difficult to get paid through the G.I. Bill, and that he struggled to readjust to civilian language, often slipping into military jargon.

Jabbar’s Deloitte profile described his interests as hunting and prayer, and quoted a section of the Quran, according to the Wall Street Journal

He reportedly had an interest in guns, writing on a now-deleted X account once that it was a “shoot-the-guns type of Saturday morning,” the New York Times reported.

In recent months, Jabbar had begun acting “all crazy, cutting his hair,” his first wife’s current husband told the same publication. It got so bad the couple decided to prevent Jabbar from seeing his daughters, who are 20 and 15.

“The girls are a mess,” following the attack, their stepfather said.

Marilyn Bradford, 70, who lived upstairs from Mr. Jabbar in a Houston apartment building, told the Times “he was no terrorist to me.”

Jabbar gave her a dryer, a steamer and other household supplies before moving out of the building about a year ago, Bradford said, and would often offer to help with carrying her groceries.She said she often saw him hanging out with his kids, the girls from his first marriage, and the young boy from his second.

“He was an outcast person. I was the only one he really talked to. I used to refer to him as my buddy,” she said.

Another former friend Chris Pousson, 42, himself a retired Air Force veteran, said Jabbar was “quiet and reserved.”  The pair went to high school in Beaumont together and reconnected on Facebook after they both left the military.

“He wasn’t a troublemaker at all,” Mr. Pousson said of their time in school in an interview with the Times. “He made good grades and was always well-dressed in button-ups and polo shirts.”

He added that he noticed that Jabbar was making a lot of religious posts on the site after they became friends again around 2015. “It was never Muslim extremist stuff, and he was never threatening any violence, but you could see that he had gotten really passionate,” he said...

Jabbar’s brother, Abdur Jabbar, 24, said the pair spoke two weeks ago and all seemed well on the surface. A visit to New Orleans was not mentioned, the younger man said. He said they were raised Christian, but his brother converted to Islam. “What he did does not represent Islam. This is more some type of radicalization, not religion,” the brother added. Describing the moment he learned of his brother’s alleged attack, Abdur added: “I couldn’t believe it all. I started crying.”