The New Orleans attacker wore Meta smart glasses to record the area in advance, FBI says

The French Quarter in New Orleans, where a driver intentionally crashed into a crowd of pedestrians on New Year’s Day, killing 14 people.

The Army veteran who attacked a crowd in New Orleans on New Year’s Day wore Meta smart glasses to record the area in advance, the FBI said at a press conference on Sunday.

Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a 42-year-old US citizen from Texas, died in a shootout with police after driving a pickup truck through a crowd of people on Bourbon Street. Jabbar killed 14 people and injured dozens more in the attack.

The FBI is investigating the attack as an act of terrorism after authorities found an ISIS flag, weapons, and a possible improvised explosive device, or IED, in the Ford F-150 pickup truck that Jabbar used.

FBI New Orleans Special Agent in Charge Lyonel Myrthil said Sunday that Jabbar made two trips to New Orleans before the attack — once in October and once in November.

In October, Myrthil said Jabbar stayed in a rental home in New Orleans for two days, where he used his Meta smart glasses to record the streets of the French Quarter as he rode around on a bicycle.

“Meta glasses appear to look like regular glasses, but they allow the user to record videos and photos hands-free,” Myrthil told reporters. “They also allow users to potentially livestream their video.”

Jabar was wearing the Meta glasses during the attack, but he did not livestream it, Myrthil said.

Myrthil also said during the press conference that Jabbar stopped at “multiple gun stores” in Texas on December 31 and visited one business where he purchased a white ice chest that he used to hide an explosive device.

US military spokespersons told the media after the attack that Jabbar served in the Army from 2007 to 2015, during which he was deployed to Afghanistan from February 2009 to January 2010.

He served in information technology and human resources roles at the time and was later an IT specialist in the Army Reserve from 2016 to 2020. He left the military as a staff sergeant.