It was New Year’s Eve and Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a Houston military veteran whose life was coming apart, climbed into a rented pickup truck and drove east toward New Orleans.
As he made his way across the Gulf Coast swampland, the native-born Jabbar simultaneously recorded a series of videos he would soon post to social media in which he swore his allegiance to Islamic State and declared his intention to commit mass murder.
The city he found at the end of his journey was heaving. Fireworks illuminated the sky over the Mississippi at midnight. On Bourbon Street, where locals joke there is no such thing as “last call,” revelers were packed shoulder-to-shoulder, throwing back hurricanes and daiquiris. The New Year’s Eve party had been supersized by the Sugar Bowl New Orleans was hosting the next day between two of America’s most storied college football teams, Notre Dame and the University of Georgia.
