New Orleans Attacker’s Descent From Six-Figure Job to ISIS-Inspired Terror

The Army vet suspected of killing 15 people in a terror attack in New Orleans worked as a senior consultant at Deloitte making six figures, the Wall Street Journal reported.

After a 10-year stint with the U.S. Army, Texas native Shamsud-Din Jabbar climbed the corporate ladder at Accenture and Ernst & Young, where he worked as a cloud consulting manager.

In 2021, he was hired at Deloitte as a “senior solutions specialist” making about $125,000 per year, according to court records cited by the Journal.

He worked there until at least the past fall; his internal Deloitte profile listed his clients as the state of Oregon, the National Institutes of Health and Johnson & Johnson.

On a personal level, people who knew him describe Mr, Jabbar—who has three children from two failed marriages—as quiet, caring and clever.

But the FBI has identified Jabbar, 42, as the suspect who drove a truck carrying explosives and an ISIS flag into a crowd of New Year’s Eve revelers on Bourbon Street, killing 15 and injuring more than 30. He then allegedly opened fire on police and was killed in a shoot-out.

In the days prior to the attack, Jabbar had set an email out-of-office message on Dec. 20 saying he planned to return to work after Jan. 1, the Journal reported. The account has since been deactivated.

“We are shocked to learn of reports today that the individual identified as a suspect had any association with our firm. The named individual served in a staff-level role since being hired in 2021,” Deloitte said in a statement. “Like everyone, we are outraged by this shameful and senseless act of violence and are doing all we can to assist authorities in their investigation.”

Despite the outward appearances of success, Jabbar had long experienced struggles in his personal life.

He was charged with two minor infractions two decades ago—misdemeanor theft in 2002, driving with an invalid license in 2005—according to criminal records in Texas. He had also been disciplined twice while he was in the Army—between 2006 and 2015—for driving under the influence, according to the Journal.

He was married twice and divorced twice, with his first wife eventually cutting him off from their two children and his second wife taking out a restraining order against him.

The 2020 restraining order prohibited both parties from sending threatening and obscene messages, or causing “bodily injury” to each other or their child. And it prohibited Jabbar from making late-night prank calls, acting abusively, or threatening the woman—Shaneed Chantil Jabbar—or their child, a six-year-old boy.

He struggled financially and reportedly communicated this to his second wife’s lawyer. “I cannot afford the house payment,” he wrote to the attorney in 2022, according to the New York Times. “It is past due in excess of $27,000 and in danger of foreclosure if we delay settling the divorce.”

Jabbar had also been ordered to pay his first wife spousal support and had a mortgage, meaning his monthly expenses often exceeded his income.

While working as a consultant, Jabbar was trying to earn money in real estate on the side. But his business was losing money and he was racking up tens of thousands of dollars in credit card and other debts. He let his real estate license expire in early 2023.

In a 2015 interview with Georgia State University’s student paper, Jabbar had expressed frustration with life after the military. He said that the Department of Veterans Affairs had made it difficult to get paid through the G.I. Bill, and that he struggled to readjust to civilian language, often slipping into military jargon.

Jabbar’s Deloitte profile described his interests as hunting and prayer, and quoted a section of the Quran, according to the Wall Street Journal

He reportedly had an interest in guns, writing on a now-deleted X account once that it was a “shoot-the-guns type of Saturday morning,” the New York Times reported.

In recent months, Jabbar had begun acting “all crazy, cutting his hair,” his first wife’s current husband told the same publication. It got so bad the couple decided to prevent Jabbar from seeing his daughters, who are 20 and 15.

“The girls are a mess,” following the attack, their stepfather said.

Marilyn Bradford, 70, who lived upstairs from Mr. Jabbar in a Houston apartment building, told the Times “he was no terrorist to me.”

Jabbar gave her a dryer, a steamer and other household supplies before moving out of the building about a year ago, Bradford said, and would often offer to help with carrying her groceries.

She said she often saw him hanging out with his kids, the girls from his first marriage, and the young boy from his second.

“He was an outcast person. I was the only one he really talked to. I used to refer to him as my buddy,” she said.

Another former friend Chris Pousson, 42, himself a retired Air Force veteran, said Jabbar was “quiet and reserved.”

The pair went to high school in Beaumont together and reconnected on Facebook after they both left the military.

“He wasn’t a troublemaker at all,” Mr. Pousson said of their time in school in an interview with the Times. “He made good grades and was always well-dressed in button-ups and polo shirts.”

He added that he noticed that Jabbar was making a lot of religious posts on the site after they became friends again around 2015. “It was never Muslim extremist stuff, and he was never threatening any violence, but you could see that he had gotten really passionate,” he said.

Pousson added that the attack was “a complete 180 from the quiet, reserved person I knew.”

Jabbar’s brother, Abdur Jabbar, 24, said the pair spoke two weeks ago and all seemed well on the surface. A visit to New Orleans was not mentioned, the younger man said.

He said they were raised Christian, but his brother converted to Islam. “What he did does not represent Islam. This is more some type of radicalization, not religion,” the brother added. Describing the moment he learned of his brother’s alleged attack, Abdur added: “I couldn’t believe it all. I started crying.”

President Joe Biden on Wednesday said he’d been informed by the FBI that the attacker shared videos online “indicating that he was inspired by ISIS, expressing a desire to kill.”

In a separate statement, the president said the bureau is leading the investigation into the attack and is treating it as an act of terrorism.

“My heart goes out to the victims and their families who were simply trying to celebrate the holiday,” he said. “There is no justification for violence of any kind, and we will not tolerate any attack on any of our nation’s communities.”