Shamsud-Din Jabbar, the Texas man who drove a truck through a crowd of New Year’s revelers in New Orleans, visited the city twice in the months leading up to the attack, using Meta smart glasses to record a video as he traveled the length of Bourbon Street, the later site of his attack.
Following the October and November trips to New Orleans, Jabbar returned to the city ahead of New Year’s celebrations and carried out the attack, which killed 14 people and injured scores of others.
Jabbar was shot and killled by police in the aftermath.
Investigators recovered the glasses from Jabbar’s body at the scene and don’t believe he enabled their live-streaming capacity during the truck massacre.
The AI-enabled glasses allow users to make calls, take photos, and record videos, and their use may speak to Jabbar’s tech savvy.
The U.S. Army veteran served in information technology roles in the military, and later at the prominent professional services firms Deloitte and Ernst & Young.
Despite Jabbar using high-tech tools to surveil the future scene of the attack, investigators said his inexperience with explosives meant a second phase of the plan, using improvised explosive devices placed around the French Quarter, was not realized.
Unable to obtain military-grade detonators, Jabbar planned to use an electric match to set off two coolers containing explosives he put in place ahead of the truck attack, but the Texas man never set them off.
“He didn’t use the right or correct device to set it off,” Joshua Jackson, special agent in charge of the New Orleans office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, said during a press conference on Sunday. “That is just indicative of his experience and lack of understanding of how that material might be set off.”
This is a breaking news story and will be updated with new information.
