At 3:15 am on New Years Day, Shamsud-Din Jabbara ran a white truck into groups of people in New Orleans
Army veteran, Shamsud-Din Jabbar from Houston, TX, was identified as the suspect in the deadly New Orleans truck-ramming attack during the early hours of New Year’s Day.
In October of last year, Jabbar was reportedly seen riding a bike through the city’s French Quarter, wearing sunglasses and appearing to be a typical tourist. However, FBI officials now believe that Jabbar’s actions were more intentional.
Lyonel Myrthil, special agent in charge of the FBI’s New Orleans field office, stated during a news conference days after the attack that the sunglasses Jabbar was wearing were a pair of Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses, equipped with cameras in the frame, allowing him to take video and photos without using his hands.
“Everything he does with the glasses you can do with a cell phone, but it does give you the cover,” said Brad Garrett, a retired FBI profiler and an ABC News contributor.
Jabbar died in a gunfight with the police before he could set off two improvised explosive devices planted in coolers on the streets of the French Quarter, according to the FBI. The devices failed to go off because Jabbar was shot to death before he could detonate them, or possibly because he used the wrong mechanism to detonate the explosives.
The attack, killing 14 people and injuring dozens more has been a highly talked about topic since. A black ISIS flag was flying from the truck’s rear bumper, and the FBI called the attack an act of terrorism, but later determined otherwise and that it was just a purposeful attack.
