A US Army veteran who drove a pickup truck into a crowd of New Year’s revelers in New Orleans, killing 15 people, had posted videos to social media hours before the carnage saying he was inspired by the Islamic State group and expressing a desire to kill, US President Joe Biden said.
The FBI said it was investigating early Wednesday’s attack in which the driver steered around a police blockade and slammed into revelers before being shot dead by police as a terrorist act and did not believe he acted alone.
Investigators found guns and what appeared to be an improvised explosive device in the vehicle — which bore the flag of the Islamic State group — along with other explosive devices elsewhere in the city’s famed French Quarter.
Photo: Reuters
The rampage turned festive Bourbon Street into a macabre scene of maimed victims, bloodied bodies and pedestrians fleeing for safety inside nightclubs and restaurants. In addition to the dead, dozens of people were hurt. A college football playoff game at the nearby Superdome was postponed until yesterday.
Zion Parsons, 18, of Gulfport, Mississippi, said he saw the truck “barreling through, throwing people like in a movie scene, throwing people into the air.”
“Bodies, bodies all up and down the street, everybody screaming and hollering,” said Parsons, whose friend Nikyra Dedeaux was among the people killed.
New Orleans Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick said: “This is not just an act of terrorism. This is evil.”
The FBI identified the driver as Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42, a US citizen from Texas, and said it was working to determine any potential associations with terrorist organizations.
“We do not believe that Jabbar was solely responsible,” FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge Alethea Duncan said.
Investigators found multiple improvised explosives, including two pipe bombs that were concealed within coolers and wired for remote detonation, a Louisiana State Police intelligence bulletin said.
Surveillance footage also showed three men and a woman placing one of the devices, the bulletin said, but federal officials did not immediately confirm that detail and it was not clear who they were or what connection they had to the attack, if any.
“For those people who don’t believe in objective evil, all you have to do is look at what happened in our city early this morning,” US Senator John Kennedy said. “If this doesn’t trigger the gag reflex of every American, every fair-minded American, I’ll be very surprised.”
Biden, speaking from the presidential retreat at Camp David, addressed the victims and the people of New Orleans: “I want you to know I grieve with you. Our nation grieves with you as you mourn and as you heal.”
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