Shamsud-Din Jabbar, the driver behind the Bourbon Street attack on New Year’s, researched New Orleans and the deadly Christmas market attack in Germany in the hours and weeks before the attack, the FBI said in an update Tuesday.
“An initial review of his electronics shows Jabbar conducted many online searches,” the FBI said on Tuesday.
The FBI said that “as late as mid-November,” Jabbar looked up how to access a balcony on Bourbon Street, researched Mardi Gras and looked up information about several shootings in New Orleans.
In the hours before driving his rented vehicle into a crowd on Bourbon Street, Jabbar also searched for information “about the car that rammed into innocent victims in a Christmas market in Germany just ten days before,” the FBI said.
The FBI provided the update on Tuesday as part of an ongoing investigation into the terrorist attack that resulted in 14 deaths and 57 injuries. Jabbar, a U.S. citizen from Houston, was shot and killed by police after the attack.
The FBI has said that Jabbar acted alone but was “inspired by ISIS.”
In the Tuesday update, the FBI said new evidence “indicates Jabbar became a more devout Muslim in 2022.”
“During this time, Jabbar began isolating himself from society,” the FBI update continued. “Around the spring of 2024, Jabbar began following extremist views.”
