Act of Violence

New Year’s Eve New Orleans Attack

Photo by Tomas Anton Escobar on Unsplash

This past New Year’s Eve, Shamsud-Din Jabbar drove a pickup truck into a crowd on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, La. around 3:15 a.m. CST (4:15 a.m. EST). Due to this incident, 15 people were killed, 35 hospitalized and 57 injured. When Jabbar opened fire on the crowd, police shot back and Jabbar was killed.

“I thought it [the incident] was terrible,” senior Mallory Brown said. “It’s a terrible loss of life and so many people are affected by it and especially on a celebrated holiday that’s supposed to be fun and about cheer for something like that to happen. It’s just really sad.”

The truck used in the attack was an electric Ford pickup truck rented from Houston, Texas. According to the FBI, Jabbar had searched for how to access a balcony on Bourbon Street and information about Mardi Gras, a famous New Orleans tradition, which suggests he could have been planning the attack for a while. Hours before the attack, he had also searched for information about the vehicle that was driven into a Christmas crowd in Germany on Dec. 21, 2024.

According to a behavioral analyst, Susan Constantine, Jabbar showed many “red flags” before the attack and Constantine described him as an “anomaly” in the New Orleans’ French Quarter. He was seen wearing a long formal coat with glasses and frequently looking at his phone while carrying a cooler that was later discovered to be explosives.

“These are all red flags,” Constantine said to Fox News. “Anyone looking for danger would pull out these anomalies. He’s texting very quickly, obviously in communication with someone else. And then he’s motioning to someone.”

According to the FBI, this act of violence was a terrorist attack with the evidence of the Islamic State of Iraq and ash-Sham (ISIS) flag in Jabbar’s truck. Also, a few hours before the attack, Jabbar had posted videos online showing how he was inspired by ISIS and his desire to kill people. Jabbar joined ISIS the summer prior to the attack, and he had originally planned on killing his family. The FBI reported that Jabbar did not kill his family because it “would not focus on the war between the believers and disbelievers.”

“That’s exactly why he chose where he did, because there are lots of people out—a bunch of nuts walking around, so why would they pay attention to him?” Constantine said.