The man suspected of carrying out a terrorist attack that left 14 people dead in New Orleans was captured in newly released images allegedly plotting his attack about an hour before the incident.
Officials with the FBI also released a photo of a cooler that contained an improvised explosive device, or IED, that he had allegedly placed at the intersection of Bourbon and Orleans streets on New Year’s Day.
The FBI said it is releasing those photos because it is “seeking information from the public regarding the investigation into the attack on innocent victims.”
On Thursday, federal authorities said Jabbar acted alone and was “100 percent” inspired by ISIS, a terrorist group that had controlled swaths of Syria and Iraq about a decade ago. That represented a reversal in an FBI statement that he may have had accomplices.
The FBI also said that Jabbar, a U.S. citizen from Texas, posted five videos on his Facebook account in the hours before the attack in which he proclaimed his support for the group and previewed the violence that he would soon unleash in the famed French Quarter district.
“This was an act of terrorism. It was premeditated and an evil act,” said Christopher Raia, deputy assistant director of the FBI’s counterterrorism division.
Along with the more than a dozen people who died and scores more who were injured, Jabbar, 42, was fatally shot in a firefight with police after steering his speeding truck around a barricade and plowing into the crowd.
The FBI continued to hunt for clues about Jabbar but said a day into its investigation that it was confident he was not aided by anyone else in the attack, which killed an 18-year-old aspiring nurse, a single mother, a father of two, and a former Princeton University football star, among others.
Abdur-Rahim Jabbar, the suspect’s younger brother, said on Thursday that it “doesn’t feel real” that his brother could have done this.
“I never would have thought it’d be him,” he said. “It’s completely unlike him.”
He said that his brother had been isolated in the past few years but that he had also been in touch with him recently and had not seen any signs of radicalization.
“It’s completely contradictory to who he was and how his family and his friends know him,” he said.
FBI officials have stressed that there was no indication of a connection between the New Orleans terrorist attack and an explosion involving a Tesla Cybertruck in front of President-elect Donald Trump’s Las Vegas hotel, which also occurred on New Year’s Day.
