The perpetrator of this week’s deadly New Orleans car attack had Black Creole roots in Louisiana, according to public records reviewed by Black Catholic Messenger.
42-year-old Shamsud-din Jabbar, the son of African-American Texans, planted several explosives and drove an electric truck through a busy Bourbon Street crowd in the French Quarter early New Year’s Day morning, killing 14 and injuring three dozen more.
The car bore an Islamic State (ISIS) flag at the time of the attack, according to FBI investigators who now believe Jabbar acted alone in what they are calling an act of terrorism.
Among the dead are at least 12 Americans, including a teenager from Mississippi; a British national; and one female victim who remains unidentified as of Saturday afternoon. Jabbar was also killed after opening fire on police.
The official list of victims in the New Orleans terror attack has been released by the coroner. One victim has not yet been identified.
— BNO News Live (@BNODesk) January 3, 2025
Andrew Dauphin, 26, Montgomery, Alamaba, preliminary COD: blunt force injuries, Bourbon St.
1/1/25, Kareem Badawi, 23, m, Baton Rouge, LA,…
Jabbar, born in Beaumont, Texas, to Abdal Rahim Jabbar and the former Herma Everett in 1982, is believed to have been radicalized in a form of Islamic extremism, according to testimonies shared with the FBI and social media videos posted immediately prior to the attack.
Shamsud-din Jabbar’s father had converted to Islam as an adult. He was born Masterson Young, according to a 1975 yearbook from the former Hebert High School in Beaumont.
It is unclear whether Shamsud-din Jabbar also had a different birth name, or was born after his father’s conversion. He was known to have attended a Christian church as a child with his mother, who was divorced from his father in 1996. The elder Jabbar did not respond to a request for comment from BCM.
Shamsud-din Jabbar’s roots can be traced back to Louisiana on both his maternal and paternal sides, with his mother descending from the Malveaux, Franchebois, and Young families in Opelousas and greater St. Landry Parish. His father also descends from the Youngs in Louisiana, as well as the Bertrand and Simon families, also of Acadiana.
A smaller branch of Jabbar’s ancestry, the Everett and Ceasar families, is several generations deep in Texas, mostly in the Beaumont and Jefferson County area. Jabbar himself was a resident of Houston at the time of his death, and had traveled to Louisiana in a rental car to carry out his attack in New Orleans.
A former member of the U.S. Army, Jabbar resided in North Carolina for a time during his service, and later worked in real estate before experiencing a failure of his business during the COVID-19 pandemic. He was reportedly married three times in the span of a decade and faced several legal issues related to child support and domestic violence.
According to his half-brother, Abdur, Jabbar became a practicing Muslim as a child and only later became interested in fundamentalist ideologies. He traveled to Egypt in 2023 and claimed that he planned to kill his family members before joining ISIS and targeting New Orleans.
Nate Tinner-Williams is co-founder and editor of Black Catholic Messenger.
