The suspect in the truck attack that killed 14 and injured dozens in New Orleans on New Year’s had traveled to Egypt in 2023 for about a month, his half-brother told ABC News.
Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a 42-year-old Army veteran and U.S.-born citizen from Texas, went to Egypt alone and told his family he was going “because it was cheap and beautiful,” his half-brother, 24-year-old Abdur Jabbar, said.
Shamsud-Din Jabbar’s foreign travel is a part of the ongoing investigation, law enforcement officials told ABC News.
Investigators are working to determine what he did during his travel in Egypt, why he went and who he interacted with while there, multiple sources said. Critical to the probe is whether he had been radicalized prior to the travel or if the travel marked the start of his radicalization.
“This next most important phase of the investigation is to find out how that radicalization happened and if it happened on that trip,” Orleans Parish District Attorney Jason Williams told ABC News.
Early on New Year’s Day, Shamsud-Din Jabbar drove a pickup truck onto a sidewalk and around a parked police car serving as a barricade to plow into pedestrians over a three-block stretch on Bourbon Street, police said. He then exited the damaged vehicle armed with an assault rifle and opened fire on police officers, law enforcement said. Officers returned fire, killing him.
Shamsud-Din Jabbar posted several videos online hours before the attack “proclaiming his support for ISIS” and mentioning he joined ISIS before this summer, according to the FBI.
Officials said the first 24 hours after the ramming attack were occupied by a feverish effort to determine whether there were additional suspects on the loose or if Shamsud-Din Jabbar worked with accomplices. Since Thursday, investigators have been focused on piecing together his path to radicalization and the events that led up to his decision to attack Bourbon Street.
