The man suspected of mowing down dozens of New Year's Day revelers in New Orleans, killing 14, complained of problems communicating in the civilian world in a nine-year-old interview that has resurfaced this week.
Shamsud-Din Jabbar, who died in a shootout with police in the French Quarter early Wednesday morning, told the student newspaper at Georgia State University in 2015 that he didn't "know how to speak" after leaving the military.
"The culture isn't too much different, but once you get out of the military, there's so many different acronyms you've learned," Jabbar, spelled Jabaar in the article, told his student interviewer. "And as you transition out … you don't know how to speak without using these terms, and you're not sure what terms are used outside the military."
That interviewer, Sean Keenan, is now a New York Times contributor who said the interview with Jabbar was "less than memorable."
"My head was spinning," Keenan told CNN on Thursday morning after learning Jabbar was identified by police as the man behind the attack. "What little I remember from that interview was a very cool, calm, and collected guy. Nothing about his character threw any red flags."
Jabbar served as a human resources and information technology specialist in the Army from 2007 to 2015 and was honorably discharged with the rank of sergeant. He studied computer information systems while at Georgia State. He served in the Army Reserves from 2015 until July 2020.
More than four years later, police say he rented a Ford F-150 electric pickup truck and gunned it down Bourbon Street early New Year's morning with an Islamic State flag in tow, aiming to inflict as much carnage as possible in what they called a terrorist attack.
But in the October 2015 interview with Keenan, Jabbar was a vet trying to keep on top of the paperwork needed by the Department of Veterans Affairs to get his funds from the G.I. Bill.
"It's such a large agency, and they have so many [military men and women] coming out … that you have to do your due diligence, make sure you have your paperwork together," he said.
Mark Swanson ✉
Mark Swanson, a Newsmax writer and editor, has nearly three decades of experience covering news, culture and politics.
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