The driver in the deadly Jan. 1 ramming attack in New Orleans visited the city twice in the months before he armed himself with guns and explosives and plowed a rented truck into a crowd on Bourbon Street, investigators said on Sunday.
In one visit in October, he cruised through the city’s French Quarter wearing glasses with a built-in camera, recording video images of the layout and atmosphere of the area, which is often packed with tourists.
Investigators have been pushing to piece together a clear timeline of the attacker’s actions, including a beat-by-beat accounting of his movements in the hours immediately before the attack. They have also mounted a far more sprawling search, looking back years, to understand his path to radicalization and how he planned and carried out the burst of violence that killed 14 people, injured many others and left New Orleans anguished and alarmed.
New Orleans has been immersed in grief since the attack, but also marching forward, reopening Bourbon Street to the public and preparing to host the Super Bowl next month, followed by the season of celebration that precedes Mardi Gras. A crowd gathered on Bourbon Street on Saturday evening for a vigil that included a traditional second line. President Biden is scheduled to visit New Orleans on Monday.
The attack ended when the driver, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a 42-year-old Army veteran from Houston who had a lucrative job with an international accounting firm, was killed in a shootout with police officers.
Mr. Jabbar had expressed allegiance to the Islamic State terrorist group, better known as ISIS, after a transformation that perplexed and troubled those who knew him. He had the group’s flag on the rented Ford F-150 pickup truck that he used in the attack. In a video that he recorded for his family, he said, “I wanted you to know that I joined ISIS earlier this year.”
Officials said on Sunday that they continue to believe Mr. Jabbar acted alone in carrying out the attack, and that they were still trying to determine whether he had deeper ties to ISIS. It remained unclear why he chose New Orleans as his target, officials said.
Investigators found that Mr. Jabbar had made trips to Egypt and Canada in 2023. But they had yet to determine what role, if any, those travels might have played in his radicalization or his planning for the New Orleans attack.
“Our agents are getting answers as to where he went, who he met with and how those trips may or may not tie into his actions here in our city,” Lyonel Myrthil, the special agent in charge for the F.B.I. in New Orleans, said Sunday in a news conference.
Investigators were also trying to find out where Mr. Jabbar went and what he did when he visited New Orleans in November.
Officials praised New Orleans police officers for a swift response that they credited with sparing even more carnage. Two officers were injured in the shootout with Mr. Jabbar.
Investigators discovered that he had left two improvised explosive devices in coolers at nearby locations shortly before ramming his truck into the Bourbon Street crowd early on New Year’s morning. They said he appeared to have had limited experience in building and using explosives, and the devices he created were crude, but they believed some of them could have been effective.
Mr. Jabbar had a transmitter in the rented pickup. “We believe that the transmitter would have functioned,” Mr. Myrthil said.
One of the coolers had been moved from where Mr. Jabbar had placed it, officials said, but the people who moved it were “unknowing Bourbon Street visitors” who had no connection to Mr. Jabbar.
Both devices were deactivated by the authorities shortly after the ramming attack.
Investigators said Mr. Jabbar had rented the pickup weeks before the attack, and drove it to New Orleans from his home in Texas, arriving on the afternoon of Dec. 31. Investigators found bomb-making materials at a residence he had rented in New Orleans, where he had set a fire just before setting off for the French Quarter. Officials said the fire burned itself out within a few hours and was already extinguished by the time firefighters arrived at the home.
