An Islamist terrorist killed fifteen people and injured thirty more after ramming his vehicle into a crowd of people who were celebrating the New Year in New Orleans.
The FBI—whose local spokesperson initially denied a terrorism link—is now investigating the incident as an “act of terrorism” after finding an ISIS flag inside the vehicle and pro-ISIS videos posted by the attacker. The Bureau said that the perpetrator, 42-year-old U.S.-born Shamsud-Din Jabbar, who was shot and killed by police, may have had accomplices.
Authorities are also investigating whether the attack is connected to a vehicle explosion outside a Las Vegas hotel owned by President-elect Donald Trump, which killed one person.
The incident is the latest in a series of similar terror attacks using vehicles to ram celebrating crowds in the Western world, with the first such attack dating back to 2016 in the French city of Nice, and the latest one only a few weeks ago in the German city of Magdeburg.
Targeting Christmas markets, New Year parties and other traditional celebrations, these attacks strike at the heart of Western culture. The attack in the early hours of New Year’s Day serves as a stark reminder that Islamist terrorism, whether imported or home-grown, poses a daily threat to the lives of everyday citizens, and that leftist-liberal leaders are partially to blame for having swept the problem under the carpet.
Although Shamsud-Din Jabbar was a U.S. citizen, Donald Trump was right to point out after the attack that the rise of crime and radical Islamism are closely connected to mass, uncontrolled, and illegal migration that the leaders of the United States and Western Europe have allowed with their pro-migration policies.
In a post on his Truth Social account, Trump commented:
When I said that the criminals coming in are far worse than the criminals we have in our country, that statement was constantly refuted by Democrats and the Fake News Media, but it turned out to be true. The crime rate in our country is at a level that nobody has ever seen before.
The attack on New Year’s Day began at around 3:15 a.m. when Shamsud-Din Jabbar swerved around makeshift barriers and steered his pickup truck into a crowd of party-goers in New Orleans in the heart of the French Quarter. He then exited the vehicle, and was killed in a shootout with police—two of whom were wounded, but are in a stable condition.
According to Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick, “this man was trying to run over as many people as he possibly could.” He was driving at “very high speed” and in a “very intentional” manner. He was “hellbent on creating the carnage and the damage that he did.”
“This is not just an act of terrorism,” Kirkpatrick said. “This is evil.”
U.S. President Joe Biden called the attack “despicable,” and said Jabbar had posted videos online hours before, indicating that he was inspired by ISIS, “expressing the desire to kill.”
Police found weapons and a potential explosive device in the vehicle, while two potential explosive devices were found in the French Quarter and rendered safe.
The city’s decision to at this time repair portable bollards, intended to prevent exactly this type of attack, came under heavy criticism on Wednesday. Police claimed in this case, those obstacles would not have helped, as the terrorist drove around a police cruiser and onto the sidewalk to enter Bourbon Street.
Shamsud-Din Jabbar was a 42-year-old U.S. citizen from Beaumont, Texas. The Pentagon said he had served in the Army as a human resources specialist and an IT specialist from 2007 to 2015, and then in the Army Reserve until 2020. He was deployed to Afghanistan from February 2009 until January 2010.
In recent years, he worked as a real estate agent in Houston. Jabbar did not have a violent criminal record before the attack but was charged with a misdemeanor in 2002 for property theft and arrested in 2005 for driving with an invalid licence.
Authorities are now investigating whether his actions in New Orleans could be linked to an explosion on Wednesday, January 1st of a Tesla Cybertruck outside a hotel owned by Donald Trump in Las Vegas that killed one person.
The driver of the truck, who was killed in the blast, has been identified as 37-year-old Colorado resident and army veteran Matthew Livelsberger. The vehicle was packed with firework-style mortars, camping fuel, and canisters.
The vehicles in both Las Vegas and New Orleans were rented through the car-sharing app Turo. Las Vegas Sheriff Kevin McMahill said that was a “coincidence … that we have to continue to look into.” A spokesperson for the app said, “we do not believe that either renter … had a criminal background that would have identified them as a security threat.”
