The New York Times reports that the suspect in this morning’s terrorist attack in New Orleans has been identified as Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar. (See my earlier post on initial details about the attack.)
Jabbar apparently died in the aftermath of the truck-ramming attack in which he killed at least ten people and injured dozens of others, and engaged in a shootout with police afterwards. I don’t know anything reliable regarding Jabbar’s background at this writing. (In an earlier post, I noted a report that said the number of dead had risen to a dozen. Most of the reporting I’ve reviewed continues to say “at least 10,” so it’s probably better to go with that until we know more. [ACM; as this update is written on January 4, the death toll is 14.)
It is also not publicly known at this time whether Jabbar is the registered owner of the truck. [ACM: It was later clarified that Jabbar rented the truck.] I have also seen no confirmation on whether, as noted in the earlier post, a black flag was flying from the back of the truck at the time of the attack, though the Times-Picayune/New Orleans Advocate cites a source as saying that “Jabbar was carrying an ISIS flag in the truck.” [ACM: It has been confirmed that the black flag was flying from the truck.]
The Times also reports that Jabbar appears to have possessed at least one IED, and that the massacre is being investigated by the FBI as a terrorist attack. Notwithstanding that (as I detailed in the earlier post), the FBI official running the investigation, Alethea Duncan (the assistant special agent in charge of the bureau’s local field office), initially took pains to say that the bureau did not consider the incident a “terrorist event” at this preliminary investigative stage.
Author’s note: Besides the other clarifications in this post, I’ve edited it (on January 4) to remove references to the reporting that the Ford pick-up truck rented by the terrorist was observed crossing the southern border. As amplified in this later post (dated January 3), the reporting was subsequently corrected to clarify that the truck was observed in Eagle Pass, Texas, near the southern border, on November 16. Moreover, the driver who was operating the truck at that time is not believed to be the terrorist, now identified as Shamsud-Din Jabbar. It is believed that Jabbar rented the truck elsewhere in Texas in December before driving it to New Orleans, where the attack occurred in the early hours of New Year’s Day.