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The New Year’s Day attack in New Orleans was an “act of terrorism” that was not linked to the explosion of a Tesla Cybertruck in Las Vegas just hours later, according to assessments by the FBI.
While the investigation into the New Orleans attack is in its early stages, the FBI said it believed the alleged perpetrator, US army veteran Shamsud-Din Jabbar, acted alone.
“This was an act of terrorism. It was a premeditated and evil act,” said deputy assistant FBI director Christopher Raia on Thursday. “We’re confident at this point that there is no accomplices [sic].”
Raia added that “at this point, there is no definitive link between the attack here in New Orleans and the one in Las Vegas”, though he said the FBI was not ruling anything out.
Fourteen people were killed and 35 injured when a man drove a pick-up truck into a large crowd and opened fire in the heart of New Orleans in the early hours of New Year’s Day.
The FBI said an Isis flag had been found on the truck and the agency was investigating the suspect’s potential links to terrorist organisations. Jabbar was killed in a shootout with police, lifting the death toll to 15.
Two “functional” improvised explosive devices were later found in coolers in the heart of the city’s historic French Quarter, Raia said. He added both IEDs were “rendered safe” at the scene.
Three phones and two laptops linked to Jabbar have been recovered from searches, and authorities are examining them for potential leads.
Investigators said they had begun stitching together a timeline of the attack. Jabbar had picked up the rented Ford F-150 pick-up truck in Houston, Texas, on December 30, and then driven east to New Orleans the following day.
In Facebook videos posted along the way Jabbar proclaimed his support for Isis, and said he had originally planned to target family and friends, but “was concerned the news headlines would not focus on the war between the believers and the disbelievers”, Raia said.
The FBI added the attacker claimed to have joined Isis over the summer and had produced a will.
Just hours after the New Orleans attack, a Tesla Cybertruck exploded outside of the Trump hotel in Las Vegas. President Joe Biden had said on Wednesday night that authorities were investigating whether it was linked to the attack in New Orleans.
Jabbar, a 42-year-old US citizen from Texas, was a US Army veteran who worked at consultancy firm Deloitte, where he had a “staff-level role” since 2021, the company said on Thursday.
“We are outraged by this shameful and senseless act of violence and are doing all we can to assist authorities in their investigation,” it added.
The army said Jabbar had served as a human resource and information technology specialist between 2007 and 2020. He was deployed to Afghanistan between February 2009 and January 2010.
The army also confirmed the driver of the Cybertruck that exploded in Las Vegas, Matthew Alan Livelsberger, was a serving US soldier. At the time of his death, the master sergeant was assigned to the US Army Special Operations Command and was on approved leave.
Livelsberger began his military career in 2006 and served on active duty until 2011 before transferring to the National Guard, where he served for about a year. After a brief stint in the Army Reserve, he rejoined active duty in late 2012.
The FBI on Thursday said it was searching a residence in Colorado Springs that it believed was related to the Las Vegas explosion.
Additional reporting by Felicia Schwartz in Washington
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