Latest: Authorities say the suspect in deadline New Orleans attack didn’t act alone, expand search to Texas
Emergency services on the scene Wednesday where authorities say a driver steered into a crowd in New Orleans.
Fifteen people were killed and at least 35 more were injured after a driver plowed into a crowd in the heart of New Orleans and then started shooting, authorities said.
The suspect has been identified as Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar, a 42-year-old Army veteran.
Jabbar’s criminal record, obtained from the Texas Department of Public Safety and viewed by Business Insider, shows two prior arrests in 2002 and 2005. The first was for theft, while the other was for driving with an invalid license. Both were classified as misdemeanors.
The FBI said on Wednesday evening that Texas authorities were searching a location in Houston believed to be linked to Jabbar.
“FBI Houston and the Harris County Sheriff’s Office are continuing a court-authorized search of a location near the intersection of Hugh Road and Crescent Peak Drive,” it said in a statement.
The agency said it’s made no arrests but has deployed specialized personnel, including a SWAT team, crisis negotiators, and a bomb squad, to the Houston location.
The truck slammed through Bourbon Street
New Orleans is reeling after a driver, later identified as Jabbar, drove a rented Ford pickup truck through the crowd on Bourbon Street at about 3:15 a.m.
Jabbar was killed in a shootout with the police but was believed to be working with a “range of suspects,” according to Alethea Duncan, an FBI special agent in New Orleans.
“At this time, we cannot go into detail about the subject’s history,” Duncan said in a press conference Wednesday afternoon. “We’re working through this process to figure out all this information.”
There were also explosive devices found at the scene, and the FBI confirmed in a statement that an ISIS flag was found in the vehicle.
President Joe Biden said in a press conference that, hours before the attack, the suspect had posted videos “inspired by ISIS, expressing a desire to kill.”
In a statement to Business Insider, the car-sharing app Turo said Jabbar used its service to rent the truck.
“We are heartbroken to learn that one of our host’s vehicles was involved in this awful incident,” the statement reads. “We are actively partnering with the FBI. We are not currently aware of anything in this guest’s background that would have identified him as a trust and safety threat to us at the time of the reservation.”
Superintendent Anne E. Kirkpatrick of the New Orleans Police Department said during an earlier press conference that a man drove a pickup truck down Bourbon Street “at a very fast pace.” Kirkpatrick said the man drove into the crowd intentionally.
She also said the driver shot two police officers, who she said were in stable condition.
Kirkpatrick said it appeared that most of those injured were locals rather than tourists.
Biden posted a statement that the “FBI is taking the lead in the investigation and is investigating this incident as an act of terrorism.”
NOLA Ready, the city’s emergency preparedness campaign, had initially said there was “a mass casualty incident involving a vehicle that drove into a large crowd on Canal and Bourbon Street.”
Emergency services on Bourbon Street on Wednesday.
Eyewitness accounts
Kevin Garcia, a 22-year-old who was present at the time, told CNN, “All I seen was a truck slamming into everyone on the left side of Bourbon sidewalk.”
He said that “a body came flying at me,” and that he heard gunshots.
One witness told CBS that a driver plowed into the crowd on Bourbon Street at high speed and that the driver got out and started firing a weapon, with the police firing back.
Gov. Jeff Landry of Louisiana said on X on Wednesday that a “horrific act of violence took place on Bourbon Street earlier this morning.”
“Please join Sharon and I in praying for all the victims and first responders on scene,” he wrote, referring to his wife. “I urge all near the scene to avoid the area.”
Bourbon Street, in the city’s French Quarter, is a famous party destination.
Some streets in and around the French Quarter were due to be closed for New Year’s celebrations, with Canal Street expected to stay open unless traffic got too bad, the local outlet Fox 8 WVUE-TV reported.
As a result of the attack, the Sugar Bowl between the University of Georgia and the University of Notre Dame was postponed from Wednesday night to Thursday afternoon.
