New Orleans attacker had researched similar violent rampage and how to access Bourbon St. balcony
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Before plowing a pickup truck into a crowd of New Year’s revelers in New Orleans, killing 14 people, the man who carried out the Islamic State group-inspired attack had researched how to access a balcony on the city's famed Bourbon Street and looked up information about a similar recent attack at a Christmas market in Germany, the FBI said.
Nearly two weeks after Shamsud-Din Jabbar's rampage, the FBI continues to uncover new information detailing the extensive planning by the 42-year-old Army veteran who scouted out the area multiple times in the months leading up to the attack. Authorities have also been piecing together a timeline of his radicalization.
In the early hours of New Year's Day, Jabbar could be seen on video surveillance placing two containers with explosive devices, which would remain undetonated, in the French Quarter. Shortly after, around 3:15 a.m., Jabbar sped a white pickup truck around a police car blockading the entrance of Bourbon Street, where partygoers continued to wander around the street lined with bars. He drove through revelers before crashing and being killed by police in a shootout. Fifty-seven people were injured, authorities said.
Just hours before the deadly onslaught, Jabbar had searched online for information about an attack at a busy outdoor Christmas Market in east Germany that occurred just ten days earlier and where a car was also used as a mass weapon, the FBI said on Tuesday. The attack in Europe left five people dead and more than 200 were injured after a car slammed into a crowd. Police arrested a 50-year-old doctor from Saudi Arabia who has renounced Islam and supports the far-right AfD party.
