A common chemical used for explosives was discovered 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, law enforcement officials said Tuesday.
The bottles of sulfuric acid were discovered in a cooler in a unit northwest of Houston during an overnight search by the FBI and Harris County Sheriff’s Office, officials with the FBI’s Houston field office said.
Sulfuric acid is widely used, commercially available and can easily be combined with other chemicals to make explosives. The FBI did not provide additional details about what the attacker, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, may have been planning to use the sulfuric acid for.
FBI officials previously said 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.
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It isn’t clear why the bombs, which the FBI said were likely made of a common explosive known as RDX, didn’t explode. Security video showed Jabbar placing the devices along Bourbon Street prior to the attack, authorities have said.
Authorities also believe Jabbar set fire to the short-term rental home in New Orleans where he stayed in an effort to destroy evidence. Bomb-making materials and what officials suspect was a silencer were found at the house.
Law enforcement officials have described the attack as an act of terror that was “100% inspired 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 videos along the way professing his support for the group and saying he’d previously planned on hurting family and friends but changed his focus because he believed the news media would not focus on the “war between the believers and the disbelievers,” Christopher Raia, deputy assistant director of the FBI’s counterterrorism division, said at a briefing last week.
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