Deployed on the evening of Wednesday January 1 between the scene of the crime, on the tourist artery of Bourbon Street and the district of the Texan city of Houston where Shamsud-Din Jabbar lived and worked, the police sought to establish whether the The man had acted with possible accomplices, in particular by loading various homemade explosive devices on board his vehicle. Hypothesis a priori ruled out this Thursday by the FBI (read opposite). Joe Biden had initially suggested that federal investigators were also examining a possible link with the explosion a few hours later on Wednesday of a Tesla “cybertruck” in front of Trump Tower in Las Vegas. The vehicle, like the one used in New Orleans (a Ford F-150), had been rented via the same peer-to-peer rental platform. But here too, the hypothesis of a link was ruled out on Thursday by the authorities.
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An anti-terrorism medal
Although the investigations have only just begun, Shamsud-Din Jabbar’s journey is gradually coming out of the shadows. He was born and raised in Beaumont, in a Christian family, but “he was Muslim most of his life,” says one of his two brothers, Abdur Jabbar, 24, today. The testimonies collected by the New York Times This cadet and former classmates describe the young “Sham”, his nickname at the time, as a “discreet, reserved and very very clever” student, with good grades and “always well dressed in button-down shirts and polo shirts“, according to Chris Pousson, himself a US Air Force veteran. He found Shamsud-Din Jabbar fifteen years later via Facebook, discovering how much he was animated by his conversion to Islam in the meantime: “There was never talk of Muslim extremism and he never threatened violence, but you could see he had become really passionate“, he believes.
In the meantime, Jabbar had found “a new framework of discipline that he lacked” in the military ranks. A bit by default according to his brother, due to not knowing what to do with his life. From 2007 to 2015, he spent eight years of active service as an IT specialist then in charge of human resources within the American army, including a stint in Afghanistan (2009-2010). This deployment even earned him the “Global War on Terrorism” medal, a distinction created in the wake of the September 11 attacks to reward participation in anti-terrorism operations around the world.
Then, reaching the rank of staff sergeant, he became a reservist (until 2020) and then began an apparently successful reconversion: diploma from the State University of Georgia in 2017, then rise in a succession of consulting companies, up to the Deloitte firm, where he was employed since 2021 and received an annual salary of around 120,000 dollars (around 116,000 euros). According to his internal presentation sheet, unearthed by the Wall Street Journal, his claimed hobbies were “hunting and prayer.” He also cited a passage from the Koran extolling the divine reward promised to faithful Muslims.
In a YouTube video from 2020, he also promoted his new real estate agent business, based in Houston. He returned to his lifelong roots in Beaumont, Texas, and how his military career would have taught him “the meaning of great service and what it means to be responsive and take everything seriously, to ensure things go smoothly“, according to his own words, with the local accent, in the same video taken offline since the attack, where he presented a neat appearance, framed by a poster proclaiming in huge letters the word “Discipline” and a book entitled Leadership. Almost blank, his criminal record only includes a minor theft in 2002 and an invalid driving license test in 2005.
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Real estate, cryptocurrencies and guns
But behind this facade of success, various archives unearthed document a more tormented personal life. In 2015, he spoke to his university’s student newspaper about the sometimes delicate challenges of his transition to civilian life. Above all, his two marriages ended in divorces and, in January 2022, in an email to his second wife’s lawyer obtained by CNN, Jabbar spoke of a precarious financial situation: $27,000 in mortgage payments overdue, around fifteen thousand dollars in unpaid credit cards, and his real estate company, Blue Meadow Properties, which had losses of $28,000 on the previous year. In an affidavit filed in the divorce file, Jabbar claimed that his expenses significantly exceeded his net income of approximately $7,500 per month, placing him in a spiral of deficit. A temporary restraining order issued against him at the start of the proceedings, in 2020, also suggests that he may have been threatening.
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Those close to him had also been alarmed by erratic behavior in recent months: according to the current husband of his first wife, cited by the New York Times“Jabbar”behaved insanely, shaved his hair“. He thus ended up no longer being allowed to see the two teenage daughters born from his first union. Also the father of a six-year-old son, he had settled about a year ago in a Muslim neighborhood in north of Houston, a suburb made up of modest houses and mobile homes, with access almost entirely sealed off Wednesday evening by the police. Neighbors interviewed by the Houston Chronicle describe a reclusive man.
“He stayed at home and avoided contact“, one of them also confided to the New York Times, on condition of anonymity, fearing anti-Muslim reprisals after the attack. This discretion contrasts with an otherwise asserted digital presence: on the deletion of his account, he was verbose about his interest in real estate, cryptocurrencies and firearms On a classified ads site specializing in arms, publications dating from last November and December are attributed to him, proposing to the sale of a pistol, ammunition and a hunting rifle.
