NEW ORLEANS — A U.S. Army veteran who drove a pickup truck into a crowd of New Year’s revelers along Bourbon Street acted alone, the FBI said Thursday. A day earlier the agency had said he had likely worked with others to carry out an act of terrorism inspired by the Islamic State group.

Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42, killed 14 people and injured about three dozen others before dying in a shootout with police. 

Christopher Raia, the deputy assistant director of the FBI's counterterrorism division, said his agency had concluded its part of the investigation along the historic thoroughfare. City officials said they would reopen Bourbon Street to visitors and business owners Thursday afternoon.

New Orleans Saints player Cam Jordan donates $25,000 to city fundraiser

I am joining @GNOFoundation and the @CityOfNOLA by donating $25,000 to the New Year’s Day Tragedy Fund to support victims of the attack. Please consider donating to assist the families of those who lost their lives and those who were severely injured.

Donate to help those… pic.twitter.com/wEV9MXiMFe

— Cam Jordan (@camjordan94) January 2, 2025

Jabbar, a U.S. citizen from Texas, had a black flag of the Islamic State in his rented truck. “This was an act of terrorism. It was premeditated and an evil act,” Raia said.

Investigators found guns and what appeared to be improvised explosive devices nearby, Raia said. Reports of similar devices elsewhere in the French Quarter were unfounded, he said. 

Zion Parsons, 18, of Gulfport, Mississippi, said he saw the truck “barreling through, throwing people like in a movie scene, throwing people into the air.”

“Bodies, bodies all up and down the street, everybody screaming and hollering,” said Parsons, whose friend Nikyra Dedeaux was among the dead.

The Sugar Bowl college football game between Notre Dame and Georgia, initially set for Wednesday night and postponed by a day in the interest of national security, was rescheduled for 3 p.m. Thursday. The city reopened Bourbon Street before the game.

Federal officials were investigating Jabbar's potential associations with any terror organizations as they hunted for additional clues in what's believed to be the deadliest IS-inspired assault on U.S. soil in years.

Local officials, meanwhile, faced more questions about security protocols in the city leading up to the attack, the latest example of a vehicle being used as a weapon to carry out mass violence.

Jabbar drove a rented pickup truck onto a sidewalk, going around a police car that was positioned to block vehicular traffic, authorities said. A barrier system meant to prevent vehicle attacks was being repaired in preparation for the Super Bowl.

Jabbar was killed by police after he exited the truck and opened fire on responding officers, New Orleans Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick said. Three officers returned fire. Two were shot and are in stable condition.

The driver “defeated” safety measures in place to protect pedestrians and was “hell-bent on creating the carnage and the damage that he did,” Kirkpatrick said.

“This is not just an act of terrorism. This is evil,” she added.

Also on Wednesday, there were deadly explosions in Honolulu and outside a Las Vegas hotel owned by President-elect Donald Trump. Biden said the FBI was looking into whether the Las Vegas explosion was connected to the New Orleans attack but had “nothing to report” as of Wednesday evening.

A photo circulated among law enforcement officials showed a bearded Jabbar wearing camouflage next to the truck after he was killed. The intelligence bulletin obtained by the AP said he was wearing a ballistic vest and helmet. The flag of the Islamic State group was on the truck's trailer hitch, the FBI said.

“For those people who don’t believe in objective evil, all you have to do is look at what happened in our city early this morning," U.S. Sen. John Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican, said. "If this doesn’t trigger the gag reflex of every American, every fair-minded American, I’ll be very surprised.”

Jabbar joined the Army in 2007, serving on active duty in human resources and information technology and deploying to Afghanistan from 2009 to 2010, the service said. He transferred to the Army Reserve in 2015 and left in 2020 with the rank of staff sergeant.

Hours after the attack, several coroner’s office vans were parked on the corner of Bourbon and Canal streets, cordoned off by police tape with crowds of dazed tourists standing around, some trying to navigate their luggage through the labyrinth of blockades.

“We looked out our front door and saw caution tape and dead silence, and it’s eerie,” said Tessa Cundiff, an Indiana native who moved to the French Quarter a few years ago. "This is not what we fell in love with, it’s sad.”

Biden, speaking from the presidential retreat at Camp David, addressed the victims and the people of New Orleans: “I want you to know I grieve with you. Our nation grieves with you as you mourn and as you heal.”

FBI officials have repeatedly warned about an elevated international terrorism threat due to the Israel-Hamas war. In the last year, the agency has disrupted other potential attacks, including in October when it arrested an Afghan man in Oklahoma for an alleged Election Day plot targeting large crowds.