The FBI descended on a property in Colorado Springs on Thursday, believed to be Livelsberger’s, but it has not yet found any evidence to suggest the Las Vegas explosion was connected to the attack in New Orleans or ISIS.
“We are following up on all potential leads and not ruling everything out. However, at this point, there is no definitive link between the attack here in New Orleans and the one in Las Vegas,” he said, before adding: “I’ll preface everything with what I started with in the beginning, which was this is very early in an investigation like this.”
More than 1000 law enforcement officials have been deployed to investigate the Bourbon Street attack, which took place at 3.15am on January 1 – the same day thousands were due to attend the highly anticipated Sugar Bowl college football quarter-final at the nearby Caesars Superdome.
The game, originally scheduled for Wednesday night at the 70,000-seat venue, had been pushed back 24 hours as authorities moved to ensure the area was safe and that Bourbon Street – which is known for its often raucous bars, clubs and restaurants – was cleaned up.
However, Mayor LaToya Cantrell announced today that all the victims had now been identified, and that the famed strip would reopen this afternoon. Local officials also insist it will be secure and safe for next month’s NFL Superbowl and the city’s world-famous Mardi Gras parade in March.
“The City of New Orleans is not only ready for gameday today, but we’re ready to continue to host large-scale events in our city because we are built to host at every single turn,” said Cantrall.
The FBI’s investigation painted a clearer picture of the Jabbar’s movements before and during the attack. According to authorities, he rented a Ford F-150 pickup truck in Houston on December 30 and drove from there to New Orleans on New Year’s Eve.
In that time, he posted five videos on social media, the first of which was posted at 1.29am, in which “Jabbar explains he originally planned to harm his family and friends but was concerned the news headlines would not focus on the ‘war between the believers and the disbelievers’”
He posted his final video at 3.02am and provided a last will and testament. Then, at 3.15am, he drove down Canal Street and hooned down a sidewalk on Bourbon Street before running over multiple pedestrians. New Orleans Police say he opened fire on officers, who in turn shot him to death.
Surveillance video also showed that before driving his truck into the crowd, Jabbar planted improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in coolers at two locations – the intersection of Bourbon and Orleans streets, and another two blocks away.
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While the precinct has now been declared safe, the incident has raised concerns about the resurgence of ISIS in the US. With three weeks until he leaves office, President Joe Biden called a meeting with his National security council in the Situation Room at the White House to discuss the issue.
Meanwhile, Trump continued to try to tie the attack to undocumented immigrants and the Biden administration’s policies – despite the fact that the New Orleans suspect was born in the US.
“With the Biden ‘Open Border’s Policy’ I said, many times during Rallies, and elsewhere, that Radical Islamic Terrorism, and other forms of violent crime, will become so bad in America that it will become hard to even imagine or believe,” Trump wrote on his website, Truth Social. “That time has come, only worse than ever imagined.”
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