Deloitte has confirmed to Fox Business and ABC News that the Texas man accused of killing at least 15 people and injuring dozens more after driving a truck through revelers celebrating the new year on Bourbon Street in New Orleans early Wednesday morning was an employee of the Big Four accounting firm.
Shamsud-Din Jabbar was a senior solution specialist at Deloitte, a source at the firm told ABC News. He had worked at Deloitte since 2021, the firm said in a statement to Fox Business and ABC News on Jan. 1.
“We are shocked to learn of reports today that the individual identified as a suspect had any association with our firm,” the statement says. “The named individual served in a staff-level role since being hired in 2021. 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.”
Jabbar was an Army veteran who enlisted in 2006 and spent nine years on active duty as an administrative clerk, with a deployment to Afghanistan in 2009. He was discharged honorably in 2020, an Army spokesperson told The Times-Picayune. He also worked as a human resources and IT specialist in the military.
Records show that after his service in the U.S. Army concluded, Jabbar first worked at another Big Four accounting firm, EY, before joining Deloitte while trying to grow his own real estate business, Blue Meadow Properties, according to ABC News. He held a real estate license from 2019 to 2023, according to published reports.
As of 2022, while employed by Deloitte, documents show Jabbar was making close to $125,000 a year—a salary which was chipped away at by court-ordered payments for his children from a past marriage and weighed down by credit card and mortgage debt, ABC News reported.
Court and property records show Jabbar lived in Fresno, Texas—about 20 miles south of Houston—with his wife until he lost his house in their divorce in August 2022.
Jabbar lived for about two years in a mobile home in north Houston before telling his landlord he was relocating to New Orleans as a renter about a month ago, the landlord said in an interview with The Times-Picayune on Wednesday.
Jabbar went to the University of Houston briefly after high school on an academic scholarship but dropped out after posting bad grades.
He then went on to become a real estate agent and posted a YouTube video in 2021 promoting his business. Jabbar promised customers service at his real estate company centered on the values he learned in the Army.
A man by the same name attended Georgia State University from 2015-2017 and graduated with a degree in computer information systems, a school spokesperson told The Times-Picayune.
Divorce filings show that Jabbar’s ex-wife said he had money troubles. His ex-wife, Shaneen McDaniel, said in court filings that Jabbar wasted the couple’s money through “excessive cash withdrawals, gifts to paramours” and “unreasonable and unnecessary spending” that she said accumulated a mound of debt.
In correspondence attached to divorce filings, Jabbar said in February 2022 that he could no longer afford his house payments, which were past due $27,000. He also amassed $16,000 in credit card debt to pay for housing, attorney’s fees and other expenses, he said.
A judge later ordered Jabbar to pay McDaniel back for some of that debt.
After the deadly attack on Wednesday morning, Jabbar was shot and killed by police, who said he intentionally rammed a pickup truck into a crowd of people on Bourbon Street, opened fire, and carried explosives.
Affixed to the truck was a flag bearing the symbol of ISIS, the international terrorist group. Jabbar was a U.S. citizen, and investigators hadn’t confirmed his affiliation with any extremist groups yet by late Wednesday, or released a motive.
President Joe Biden said Wednesday evening that the FBI told him Jabbar posted videos to social media shortly before the attack “indicating that he was inspired by ISIS, expressing a desire to kill.”
With Tribune News Wire Services
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Tags: Accounting
