The path from Thomson to terrorism: How veteran became a mass killer
AUGUSTA, Ga. - Shamsud-Din Jabbar grew up in Texas, ed the U.S. Army and apparently spent time at what was then Fort Gordon, got married in Augusta and eventually settled in Houston.
But what led him to plow a truck through a New Orleans crowd early Wednesday, killing 14 people, in the name of a radical Islamic terrorist group?
To trace that path, authorities are talking to relatives in the Thomson area and others who knew him.
He lived in Thomson while he was married to a local woman for three years before their marriage ended after abuse on his part, according to her family.
At the time, he was apparently stationed at Fort Eisenhower – then known as Fort Gordon – where he was an information technology specialist. Other soldiers who served with him there ed him as smart and friendly, according to news reports.
But the 42-year-old U.S. citizen also faced pressures. He finalized a third divorce in 2022, saying in filings he couldn’t pay his mortgage and his business was losing money.
FBI officials said Jabbar posted five videos to his Facebook in the hours before the attack in which he aligned himself with the Islamic State terrorist group. Authorities also found an Islamic State flag on the truck used in the attack.
A U.S. government official said Jabbar traveled to Egypt in 2023, staying in Cairo for a week, before returning to the U.S. and then traveling to Toronto for three days. It was not immediately clear what he did during those travels.
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In one of his videos, he said he originally planned to harm his family and friends but feared that would muddle his message about a “war between the believers and the disbelievers.”
The whole attack is “completely contradictory to who he was and how his family and his friends know him,” said Abdur-Rahim Jabbar, one of his brothers.
The 24-year-old said his older brother had increasingly isolated himself from family and friends in recent years but he hadn’t seen any signs of radicalization. He said it had been a few months since he had seen his brother in person and a few weeks since they talked on the phone.
“Nothing about his demeanor seemed to be off. He didn’t seem to be angry or anything like that. He was just his calm, well-mannered, well-tempered self,” the younger brother said.
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Army, court and other public records piece together a picture of a man who had been stationed or lived in multiple states, including North Carolina, Texas, Georgia and Alaska, had been married multiple times and seemed to be experiencing financial difficulties as he tried to adjust to civilian life.
Jabbar ed 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.
Although the Army wouldn’t officially confirm that he served at Fort Gordon, others did – including the judge who signed his marriage license in McDuffie County, his local ex-wife’s family, and soldiers who worked with him on post.
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Georgia State University confirmed Jabbar attended the school from 2015-2017 and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in computer information systems in 2017.
He had been married at least three times over the past two decades – including to Tiera Symone Whitfield when he lived in Thomson – and had at least three children.
Dwayne Marsh, who is married to one of Jabbar’s ex-wives, told The New York Times that Jabbar had been acting erratically in recent months. Marsh said he and his wife had stopped allowing the two daughters she shared with Jabbar to spend time with him.
Whitfield’s family said he’d ed her on social media in recent months, asking if she had any items left from a baby they lost when they were married. She blocked him.
Jabbar and Whitfield divorced in DeKalb County in 2016. According to news reports, he cited irreconcilable differences and said there was no hope they would get back together.
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That was one of at least three of his divorces.
Papers filed in one of those divorces show Jabbar faced a deteriorating financial situation in January 2022. Jabbar said he was $27,000 behind on house payments and wanted to quickly finalize the divorce.
“I have exhausted all means of bringing the loan current other than a loan modification, leaving us no alternative but to sell the house or allow it to go into foreclosure,” he wrote in a January 2022 email to his now-ex-wife’s attorney.
His businesses were struggling, too. One business, Blue Meadow Properties LLC, lost about $28,000 in 2021. Two other businesses he started, Jabbar Real Estate Holdings LLC and BDQ L3C, weren’t worth anything. He had also accumulated $16,000 in credit card debt because of expenses like attorney fees, according to the email.
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Court documents show he was making about $10,000 a month doing business development and other work for the consulting firm Deloitte in 2022.
Despite the tumult indicated by court documents, Abdur-Rahim Jabbar said his brother hadn’t shown any outward signs of distress or anger about his relationships.
“I think he blamed himself more than anything for his divorces. ... And he never was bitter towards his ex-wives,” the younger Jabbar said.
Childhood friend and fellow veteran Chris Pousson reconnected with Jabbar on Facebook around 2009, before the two lost touch again around 2019.
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From his home in Beaumont, he said his biggest takeaway from periodic check-ins with Jabbar were positive messages and praise for his faith, but nothing that raised any flags.
“I never saw this coming. And in the military, actually, I did anti-terrorism in the military. And if any red flags would have popped off, I would have caught them and I would have ed the proper authorities,” he said.
“But he didn’t give anything to me that would have suggested that he is capable of doing what happened.”
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Meanwhile, authorities are investigating possible connections between Jabbar and another soldier who died in another apparent attack attempt Wednesday.
Active-duty soldier Matthew Livelsberger died in a Tesla Cybertruck packed with explosives outside a Trump hotel in Las Vegas. Seven people were injured.
Authorities say they don’t believe the Las Vegas and New Orleans incidents were related.
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