The ISIS-inspired terrorist who mowed down a crowd of New Year’s Eve revelers on Bourbon Street drove from Houston to New Orleans recording deranged Facebook videos confessing his thirst to kill and pledging allegiance to the Islamic terror group.
In the first disturbing video — posted at 1:29 a.m. — Shamsud-Din Jabbar said he had initially planned on murdering his family and friends, but changed his mind over concerns the resulting media coverage wouldn’t focus on the “war between the believers and disbelievers,” FBI counterterrorism official Chris Raia said Thursday.
Hoping to manipulate the press response to better comport with his twisted narrative, the cowardly killer instead set his sights on the Big Easy.
Jabbar — who began his career in the US Army and worked a lucrative job as a corporate consultant before turning to radical Islam — recorded five similar rants over the 350-mile journey, which ended in a trail of carnage along the historic thoroughfare and hail of bullets in a gun battle with law enforcement.
Investigators have confirmed Jabbar, 42, was ideologically aligned with ISIS — saying he joined the terror group “before this summer” — and that he specifically chose Bourbon Street as the target of his monstrous act of terror.
However, they have yet to piece together what precisely brought about his radicalization.
In another video, he provided his last will and testament.
He was on a legitimate career path until apparently falling on hard times both personally and financially.
He contended with two failed marriages and faced mounting debt before he murdered 14 innocent pedestrians and injured dozens more with an explosive-laden Ford F-150 truck bearing the black flag of the jihadist group.
Born in Texas, Jabbar joined the Army in 2006, serving at bases in Alaska and North Carolina before being deployed to Afghanistan in 2009, where he served for 11 months, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Although it isn’t believed he served in a combat role, he was promoted to staff sergeant sometime in 2013.
Before leaving the Army as an active duty soldier two years later, Jabbar picked up a pair of disciplinary actions for driving under the influence, according to the outlet.
After five years as a reservist, he was honorably discharged and before long was studying computer-information systems at Georgia State University while simultaneously working as a senior cloud analyst at Big 4 consulting firm Accenture, the outlet writes citing an online résumé he posted.
Then from 2019 to 2021 he worked at EY — also a Big 4 firm — as a cloud consulting manager before landing a gig at yet another top consultancy, Deloitte, where he earned a salary of $125,000.
Live updates: Everything to know about the New Orleans terror attack
Meanwhile, Jabbar’s family life was in turmoil.
His first wife — from whom he separated in 2012 — got custody of the couple’s children, while he was ordered to pay child support as well as for their medical insurance.
He remarried in 2017, but three years later his second marriage hit the skids, his ex was granted a restraining order which prohibited Jabbar from sending her obscene or threatening messages, threatening “bodily injury” to her or the couple’s child, the outlet reported.
During the divorce proceedings — which came after a failed attempt by the couple to reconcile — Jabbar provided a statement to the court claiming financial hardship, with $7,500 a month in income and just shy of $9,000 in liabilities.
The FBI revealed that Jabbar acted alone in the attack after poring over his social media accounts, conducting “hundreds” of interviews with witnesses and searching three cell phones and two laptops recovered from an Airbnb on Mandeville Street in New Orleans linked to the terror suspect.
Lawmakers were briefed about the incident Thursday and were told Jabbar had never been on a terror watchlist prior to the rampage, sources told The Post.
