US President Joe Biden said on Thursday, the 2nd of January, that the ongoing investigation into the deadly New Year’s Day attack in New Orleans is “fluid” and that law enforcement authorities are looking into whether the French Quarter massacre was in any way linked to the Tesla car bombing outside President-elect Donald Trump’s hotel in Las Vegas, reports Politico.
No such link has yet been found, the President said, pledging to keep the American people “informed in due course” of the progress of the investigation.
The suspect identified by the FBI is 42-year-old Shamsud-Din Jabbar, who plowed a Ford pickup truck into a crowd of pedestrians on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, killing 15 people and injuring more than 30.
On Wednesday morning, Biden issued a statement saying that the FBI was leading the investigation and was investigating the incident as a terrorist attack.
Later, the FBI said in a statement that in Jabbar’s car was an ISIS flag, weapons and an improvised explosive device. Officials were investigating how the suspect obtained the vehicle, which appeared to have been rented, and whether the suspect had links to terrorist organisations.
According to the FBI, potential improvised explosive devices were also found elsewhere in New Orleans’ French Quarter.
The Pentagon confirmed that Jabbar, who was killed in a shootout with New Orleans police, served in the Army as a human resources and information technology specialist from March 2007 to January 2015, after which he spent five years in the Army Reserve as an IT specialist. Jabbar was deployed in Afghanistan from February 2009 to January 2010 and left the army as a staff sergeant.
Baiden said that the FBI informed him that a few hours before the attack, the suspect posted a video on social media saying that he was inspired by the ISIS terrorist group with a desire to kill.
President Biden announced on Thursday that “law enforcement and intelligence agencies are also investigating” the Tesla car bombing outside Trump’s hotel in Las Vegas, checking “for possible links to the attack in New Orleans”. Biden assured that law enforcement agencies are being provided with all resources to complete the investigations quickly and ensure public safety.
At a press conference, Biden said that the driver was a US citizen born in Texas, thus refuting Trump’s statement earlier on Wednesday that the attack was linked to “criminals entering” the US.
“When I said that immigrant criminals are far worse than the criminals that are in our country, that claim was constantly refuted by Democrats and the fake news media, but it turned out to be true,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Biden concluded by saying that New Orleans is a city with a rich culture that brings together people from all over the world and “the spirit of New Orleans will never, ever, ever be defeated”.