NEW ORLEANS — The FBI and Department of Homeland Security have sent law enforcement departments around the country a joint intelligence bulletin warning of the potential for copycats in wake of the New Orleans attack, ABC News has learned.
Sources told ABC News that the agencies sent the bulletin out of an abundance of caution.
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ABC News reports that the bulletin discusses how since 2014, ISIS has been promoting the use of vehicles as a method to cause mass casualties incidents.
The bulletin also gives police departments the danger signs to look out for, including the use of pre-operational surveillance and fraudulent identity documents or credit to rent vehicles.
On Thursday, the FBI said that New Orleans suspect Shamsud-Din Jabbar pledged allegiance to ISIS before the attack that killed 14 people and injured 35 people. A senior law-enforcement official told ABC News that so far there are no signs of ISIS claiming responsibility for the attack.
Investigators said they believe that Jabbar attacked alone in the attack.
“This was an act of terrorism. It was premeditated and an evil act,” Christopher Raia, the deputy assistant director of the FBI’s counterterrorism division, said on Thursday.
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At the news conference on Thursday, the FBI detailed the timeline they believe Jabbar followed to commit the terror attack.
They believe he rented the pickup truck in Houston on Dec. 30 and drove it to New Orleans on Dec. 31. Photos showed Jabbar walking on Bourbon Street just after 2 a.m. with a cooler with an IED inside that was placed at Orleans and Bourbon streets.
The attack happened at 3:15 a.m. local time.
Agents said Jabbar was from Texas and joined ISIS before the summer. He was a veteran of the U.S. Army and Army Reserve and had ties to metro Atlanta. Records show that he lived in Cobb and DeKalb counties and he earned a degree at Georgia State University.
On Thursday evening, the FBI released new photos of Jabbar walking on Bourbon Street just after 2 a.m. and the cooler with an IED inside that was placed at Orleans and Bourbon streets.
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