The man who rammed a truck into a crowd on New Year’s Day recorded footage of the area during a bicycle ride through New Orleans’s French Quarter in October, using the same Meta smart glasses he wore as he conducted the attack months later, federal authorities said Sunday.
The images were among a trove of footage that federal authorities recovered showing the planning behind the New Year’s Day attack, including the suspect’s placement of improvised explosive devices on Bourbon Street.
Authorities reiterated that Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a 42-year-old Army veteran, acted alone in the massacre that killed at least 14 people who had gathered in the popular tourist hub to celebrate the new year. Law enforcement said that Jabbar, who had a flag representing the Islamic State attached to the hitch of the truck, had pledged his support to the extremist group. Authorities said they had not uncovered any evidence of an accomplice in the United States, though they continue to examine the matter, including any potential links overseas.
Meanwhile on Sunday, New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell said the city was engaging an expert to determine whether the bollards the city uses to protect pedestrians are sufficient for high-profile events including the Super Bowl and Mardi Gras. Officials warned Sunday of the elevated potential for threats given a series of major public events over coming months.
At its briefing, the FBI provided additional details on the planning that went into the truck attack.
Lyonel Myrthil, the FBI’s special agent in charge for New Orleans, said Jabbar, who lived in the Houston area, had made trips to New Orleans in October and November, including the October trip to Bourbon Street where he recorded footage of the area using smart glasses. Before that, he had also traveled to Cairo in the summer of 2023, before flying to Ontario, Canada, and then returning to the United States, authorities said.
“Our agents are getting answers as to where he went, who he met with and how those trips may or may not tie into his actions here in our city of New Orleans,” Myrthil said.
The smart glasses that Jabbar wore, which enable hands-free video recording, would probably have allowed him to capture detailed footage of the area without attracting attention. They were recovered on him after he was killed by authorities.
“We believe he was wearing them throughout the evening” of the attack, Myrthil said. “We don’t have any indication that he was actually recording but he was wearing those glasses.”
Meta did not immediately comment on the matter.
Jabbar ultimately returned to Louisiana on Tuesday, Myrthil said, when footage showed him unloading a pickup truck outside a rental home on Mandeville Street in New Orleans.
Joshua Jackson, special agent in charge of the ATF’s New Orleans field division, said at the Sunday briefing that authorities recovered firearms and what he called “privately-made silencers,” though he cautioned that tests are still underway to determine whether the devices muffle the sound of gunfire as intended. The rental home, which contained at least one silencer and “explosives material,” authorities said, would catch fire in the hours around the attack, a blaze believed to have been set by Jabbar.
Jabbar parked his truck, a rented Ford F-150, near the scene of the attack before placing IEDs in coolers around Bourbon Street between around 1:50 a.m. and 2:20 a.m., authorities said. At 3:15 a.m., they said, he rammed his truck into the crowd of revelers, its momentum halted when it struck construction equipment. He began shooting before he was killed by authorities.
The explosives were neutralized before they could be set off. Jackson said Jabbar used an explosive material chemically similar to that found in C-4, but Jabbar attempted to set off the explosives using an electric match in place of the required detonator.
“What was different is he didn’t use the right, or the correct, device to set it off,” Jackson said. “And that is just indicative of his inexperience and lack of understanding of how that material might be set off.”