A standard chemical used for explosives was found in a Texas storage locker linked to the U.S. Army veteran who killed 14 people and injured more than two-dozen when he plowed into New Year’s revelers in New Orleans, legislation enforcement officers mentioned Tuesday.
The bottles of sulfuric acid have been found in a cooler in a unit northwest of Houston throughout an in a single day search by the FBI and Harris County Sheriff’s Office, officers with the FBI’s Houston subject workplace mentioned.
Sulfuric acid is extensively used, commercially accessible and may simply be mixed with different chemical compounds to make explosives. The FBI didn’t present further particulars about what the attacker, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, could have been planning to make use of the sulfuric acid for.
FBI officers beforehand mentioned that Jabbar, who lived in Houston and died in a firefight with authorities, left two improvised explosive devices in New Orleans that did not detonate.
It isn’t clear why the bombs, which the FBI mentioned have been possible manufactured from a typical explosive referred to as RDX, didn’t explode. Security video confirmed Jabbar inserting the gadgets alongside Bourbon Street previous to the assault, authorities have mentioned.
Authorities additionally imagine Jabbar set hearth to the short-term rental residence in New Orleans the place he stayed in an effort to destroy proof. Bomb-making supplies and what officers suspect was a silencer have been discovered on the home.
Law enforcement officers have described the assault as an act of terror that was “100% impressed by ISIS,” the Islamic State terrorist group, and carried out by Jabbar alone.
Jabbar, who drove to New Orleans from Houston in a rental truck, recorded Facebook movies alongside the way in which professing his assist for the group and saying he’d beforehand deliberate on hurting household and pals however modified his focus as a result of he believed the information media wouldn’t concentrate on the “struggle between the believers and the disbelievers,” Christopher Raia, deputy assistant director of the FBI’s counterterrorism division, mentioned at a briefing final week.
