The FBI said on Thursday that it now believed the suspect acted alone in an “act of terrorism” in the truck attack in New Orleans on New Year’s Day that killed 14 and injured dozens more when a man drove a rented pickup into a crowd celebrating on busy Bourbon Street.
The chief suspect, the 42-year-old US citizen Shamsud-Din Jabbar, was killed as he shot at police and officers returned fire, bringing the total deaths from the incident to 15, with more than 35 injured.
The FBI also announced that it had found no definitive link between the New Orleans attack and the explosion that occurred later on Wednesday of a Tesla Cybertruck outside a hotel owned by Donald Trump in Las Vegas, which resulted in the death of the driver.
Over the past 24 hours there had been contradictory reports on whether the suspect in New Orleans had associates in the planning or execution of the attack, while the authorities also had said they were looking into possible connections between the New Orleans and the Las Vegas incidents, before updating the public on Thursday on both fronts.
Christopher Raia, deputy assistant director of the FBI’s counter-terrorism division, said that the evidence had now shown Shamsud-Din Jabbar was solely responsible for the New Orleans attack and had professed his allegiance to Islamic State.
“This was an act of terrorism. It was premeditated and an evil act … He was 100% inspired by Isis,” Raia said, adding: “We know that he specifically picked out Bourbon Street. Not sure why.”
The FBI also revealed that Jabbar posted five videos on his Facebook account in the hours before the attack in which he proclaimed his support for the Islamist militant group, while also previewing the violence that he would soon unleash in the city’s famed French Quarter.
The videos included one in which he said he originally planned to harm his family and friends, but was concerned that news headlines would not focus on the “war between the believers and the disbelievers”, Raia said. He also left a last will and testament, the FBI said.
Earlier, senior FBI figures and the attorney general of Louisiana had said they believed “known associates” and “multiple people” were probably involved.
The attack took place just after 3am local time on Wednesday morning in the French Quarter of New Orleans, which was crowded with people celebrating the new year.
Jabbar, from Houston, Texas, drove a rented white pickup truck between the 100 and 400 blocks of Bourbon Street, crashing into revelers and mowing many down, then shooting from the truck, hitting two police officers before he was killed.
Jabbar, who served in the US army for 13 years, was wearing body armor and a helmet, according to a law-enforcement bulletin, and was displaying an Islamic State flag mounted on a pipe in the bed of the vehicle. The FBI is investigating the attack as an “act of terrorism”.
Abdur-Rahim Jabbar, Jabbar’s younger brother, told the Associated Press on Thursday that it “doesn’t feel real” that his brother could have done this. “I never would have thought it’d be him,” he said. “It’s completely unlike him.”
He said that his brother had been isolated in the last few years, but that he had also been in touch with him and he did not see any signs of radicalization.
“It’s completely contradictory to who he was and how his family and his friends know him,” he said.
Investigators found guns and what appeared to be improvised explosive devices in the vehicle.
Louisiana’s attorney general, Liz Murrill, said the explosive devices associated with the attack appear to have been manufactured at an Airbnb in New Orleans that she said was rented out “for that purpose”.
In addition, Murrill said, a house fire occurred on Wednesday morning “that was connected to this event, where we believe the IEDs were being made”.
A New Orleans emergency management source said firefighters who put out that intentionally set blaze spotted a gasoline can, a drill, and some type of adhesive material. That discovery prompted them to call police, who determined the materials in the home were meant to make bombs connected to the attack on Bourbon Street.
On Thursday morning, the New Orleans police superintendent, Anne Kirkpatrick, said on NBC’s Today that authorities were investigating “people of interest” related to the attack.
“We have people of interest, they are not people who are suspects at this time,” Kirkpatrick said, adding: “The FBI is tracking down everybody.”
The vehicles involved in the attacks in New Orleans and Las Vegas were rented using the car-sharing app Turo, and the suspects in both incidents, who were both killed, had been or were in the military, leading to questions being asked, including by Joe Biden, about whether the events were connected. That link was scotched by authorities later on Thursday.
A spokesperson for Turo said the company was cooperating with police. The company also said that “we do not believe that either renter … had a criminal background that would have identified them as a security threat”.
As New Orleans reeled from the attack, investigators continued to search for answers and potential accomplices.
The Sugar Bowl, a college football playoff, took place in New Orleans on Thursday. The game, which was originally scheduled for Wednesday, had been postponed due to the attack.
Kirkpatrick said the event would have Super Bowl-level security, with collaboration from local, federal and military partners.
“We are going to have absolutely hundreds of officers and staff lining our streets, lining Bourbon Street, lining the French Quarter,” Kirkpatrick said. “We are staffing up at the same level if not more so than we were prepared for Super Bowl.”
It was the deadliest Islamic State-inspired assault on American soil in years, laying bare what federal officials have warned is a resurgent international terrorist threat. That threat is emerging as the FBI and other agencies brace for dramatic leadership upheaval after Donald Trump takes office.
Seven years ago, New Orleans officials began installing adjustable barriers at intersections in the French Quarter to temporarily prevent vehicles from entering the tourist area where the narrow streets are typically teeming with pedestrians every night.
But the steel bollards were in the process of being replaced and were not engaged on New Year’s Eve, which witnesses said could have prevented the truck speeding down the street in the way it did.
Ramon Antonio Vargas contributed reporting
