Combined portraits of the 14 victims of the New Orleans terror attack
Summary
• The suspect in the New Year’s Day attack in New Orleans acted alone, the FBI said Thursday, describing the deadly event as “an act of terrorism.” Fourteen people were killed and dozens injured Wednesday when the man plowed into a crowd on Bourbon Street in a pickup truck.
• President Joe Biden, citing the FBI, said the attacker planted explosives in ice coolers in the French Quarter just hours before the attack. “They assessed he had a remote detonator in his vehicle to set off those two ice chests,” he said.
• The man, who was killed in a firefight with police after the attack, was identified as an Army veteran from Texas and had an ISIS flag in his vehicle. He said in videos made before the attack that he had joined the terror group, authorities said.
• There is no definitive connection right now between the attack in New Orleans and the Tesla Cybertruck explosion outside a Trump Hotel in Las Vegas, the FBI said Thursday.
Notre Dame wins Sugar Bowl: Notre Dame is headed to the College Football Playoff semifinals after stunning second-seed Georgia in the Sugar Bowl, being played in New Orleans just a day after an attack on New Year’s revelers left 14 people dead.
No evidence of foreign direction: The White House has so far seen no evidence of foreign direction or involvement in the attack, a source familiar with the matter told CNN.
The family of the suspected terror attacker who killed 14 revelers in New Orleans said the man they knew is completely different from the one who allegedly drove a pickup truck into a crowd on Bourbon Street. “He was very well tempered, slow to anger, kind, soft-spoken,” 24-year-old Abdur Jabbar said of his brother, Shamsud-Din Jabbar. “That’s why it was so unbelievable that he would be capable of something like this.”
“A conclusion has been reached” : Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said the FBI still has “a great deal of investigation” to do into Wednesday’s attack in New Orleans, but that “a conclusion has been reached” in terms of the suspect’s motive.
“This is an event that was inspired by a foreign terrorist ideology,” Mayorkas told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Thursday. “This individual ascribed to the heinous beliefs of ISIS.”
President Joe Biden told reporters gathered in the White House’s East Room Thursday that he’ll try to travel to New Orleans following Wednesday’s attack on Bourbon Street.
Turo, the car rental platform thrust into the spotlight: In a statement on Wednesday, the company confirmed with a “heavy heart” that vehicles rented on its platform were involved in the two attacks. The company doesn’t own any rental cars itself. Instead, Turo lets car owners list their vehicles for rent by other people, and the company takes a commission from each deal.
So Far Turo is the main link between both incidents and the other common link is both the NO attacker and the one behind the Las Vegas Cubetruck explosion served at the same army base
CNN