The man suspected of carrying out the New Year’s attack in New Orleans, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, had a checkered marital history punctuated by multiple divorces and financial difficulty, according to court records reviewed by ABC News.
The records also show that after his military service, Jabbar worked for two of the nation’s largest professional services firms, Ernst & Young and Deloitte, as he aimed to grow his own fledgling real estate business.
Jabbar has been identified by the FBI as the suspect in the deadly New Orleans attack on New Year’s revelers. At least 15 people were killed and over two dozen injured after a rented Ford pickup truck was driven through a crowd on Bourbon Street at a high rate of speed early Wednesday, officials said.
Jabbar, who police said was killed during the New Orleans attack, was a 42-year-old U.S.-born citizen and U.S. Army veteran from Texas, according to the FBI.
As of 2022, while employed by Deloitte, documents show Jabbar was making close to $125,000 a year — a salary which was chipped away at by court-ordered payments for his children from a past marriage and weighed down by credit card and mortgage debt.
According to Pousson, he initially met Jabbar in 1996 during middle school. Following their high school graduation, they lost contact when Jabbar joined the army and Pousson went into the air force, NBC reports.
Upon reconnecting several years later on Facebook, Pousson told NBC that he noticed that Jabbar’s posts focused on his Muslim beliefs, saying: “It was always positive – peace be with you, uplifting type of stuff … Nothing that he posted online that I saw was negative.”
During a visit on Thursday to New Orleans, Louisiana’s governor, Jeff Landry, said that it was a “somber day here in the city and around Louisiana”, CNN reports.
With the investigation under way, the FBI has set up a digital tip line and has directed anyone with information or video of the incident to submit it to the agency.
