(The Hill/NEXSTAR) – Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry (R), New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell and representatives from the FBI and ATF held a news conference on Thursday to update the public on the New Year’s Day terror attack that killed 14 and injured dozens of others.
The briefing comes a day after a driver, identified as 42-year-old Shamsud-Din Jabbar from Texas, drove a rented pickup truck into a crowd on Bourbon Street. The incident is being investigated as a terrorist attack after an Islamic State flag was found in the vehicle.
“It was premeditated, and an evil act,” Christopher Raia the deputy assistant director of the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division said.
Raia said Jabbar, an Army veteran, had obtained the Ford F-150 used in the attack on Dec. 30 before driving it from Houston to New Orleans on Dec. 31. During this time, he posted several videos professing “his support for ISIS” to an online platform, Raia said.
A timeline provided by Raia suggested that Jabbar had planted IED devices near the attack site in New Orleans before returning later to ram through a blocked-off area on Bourbon Street, killing 14 people. Jabbar was killed during a shootout with police
