
No connection has been found between the attack in New Orleans and the one near Donald Trump's hotel in Las Vegas. The FBI announced this in a statement to the media on Thursday, adding that they are still in the "very early stages of the investigation."
"As you know, there is also an investigation in Las Vegas. We are pursuing all possible leads and are not ruling anything out...," said, among other things, the deputy assistant director of the FBI's counterterrorism division, Christopher Raia.
What happened?
Investigators in New Orleans are trying to figure out what motivated Army veteran Shamsud-Din Jabbarm to plow a truck with an ISIS flag into a crowd celebrating New Year's Eve, killing 15 people and injuring 30 others before being shot dead by police.
According to what was announced by the FBI this afternoon, the 42-year-old American citizen from Texas who served in Afghanistan acted alone.
The presence of an ISIS flag on the rented truck has prompted investigators to treat the act as a terrorist act, and to examine possible links to terrorist organizations, such as the Islamic State. Suspected explosive devices were found inside the perpetrator's vehicle.
Jabbarm was born and raised in the city of Beaumont, as he says in a promotional video posted 4 years ago, and worked at a real estate agency in Houston. CNN, citing officials informed about the investigation, said that the suspect had recorded videos in which he mentioned his dream of joining ISIS but also the intention to kill his family, after the divorce. In one of the videos, he spoke of the intention to gather all the family members for a party, where he would then execute them.