The FBI said on Sunday that the terrorist attacker from New Orleans used Meta smart glasses to record footage of the area during two visits to the Louisiana city in the weeks prior to the attack.
Only a few weeks before his attack on Bourbon Street, which claimed 14 lives, 42-year-old Shamsud-Din Jabbar stayed at a rented house in New Orleans in the end of October and again in November. During that trip, he rode a bicycle around the French Quarter while wearing the smart glasses to shoot footage, FBI Special Agent in Charge Lyonel Myrthil said on Sunday.
According to Myrthil, meta glasses seem like ordinary spectacles but enable hand-free video and photo recording. Additionally, they enable the user to maybe broadcast via their video.
According to Myrthil, Jabbar wore the glasses throughout his attack on New Year’s Day, but they weren’t turned on for a livestream. The glasses were discovered on Jabbar, but there was no sign that he was recording the attack at all.
Early on New Year’s Day, the 42-year-old drove a hired vehicle through the crowded strip and was killed in a firefight with police. Additionally, investigators discovered that he had planted two homemade bombs nearby before the attack, but neither one exploded.
Additionally, authorities think Jabbar burned down a temporary rental home on New Orleans’ Mandeville Street where bomb-making supplies were discovered.
near 1:53 a.m., Jabbar was seen on camera setting one homemade explosive device in a cooler near Bourbon and St. Peter Streets. Later, unknown people moved the device.
According to what we’ve seen thus far in our research, these were unintentional people who moved the cooler from one place to another without realizing what was inside, Myrthil stated.
About half an hour later, Jabbar put another explosive in a different bucket-style cooler.
A rifle and a semiautomatic handgun were also found during the inquiry. The.308-caliber rifle was acquired on November 19 during a private transaction in Arlington, Texas, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.
In recordings made public, Jabbar, a U.S. citizen who was born in Texas and served in the Army, claimed to have joined ISIS earlier this year. According to the FBI, he carried out the New Year’s Day attack alone and doesn’t seem to have any collaborators in the United States.
The FBI is still looking into a number of Jabbar’s associates, both domestically and outside, Myrthil told reporters on Sunday. Jabbar’s 2023 journey to Cairo and his subsequent trip to Canada about a week after his return are two topics of additional investigation.
According to Myrthil, our agents are receiving information about his whereabouts, the people he met, and how those travels might or might not be related to his behavior in our city of New Orleans.
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