About a 12 months ago, Jabbar moved right into a rented house in a Muslim neighborhood north of Houston. On Wednesday, access to much of the neighborhood, including an area mosque, was blocked by law enforcement as FBI investigators searched the area of trailers and tiny homes.
One of Jabbar’s neighbors, who was prevented from returning home during the search, said Jabbar kept to himself and normally stayed at home. The neighbor asked to stay anonymous out of concern for his safety as a Muslim following the attack.
Jabbar’s brother, Abdur Jabbar, 24, said in an interview in Beaumont, Texas, where the brothers grew up, that they were raised Christian, but Shamsud-Din converted way back.
“As far as I know, he was a Muslim most of his life,” the younger Jabbar said. “What he did does not represent Islam. It’s a kind of radicalization, not a religion.”
He added that his brother, who in addition to his older daughters had a six-year-old son, joined the army not knowing what he wanted to do in life.
“It was a new way to get some kind of discipline,” Jabbar said.
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Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar spent years in the military moving between states, at one point ending up at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and once deployed to Afghanistan, according to court documents. A U.S. Army statement said he worked primarily as an information technology specialist. He was discharged from the Army Reserve in 2020 with the rank of staff sergeant.
Chris Pousson, 42, a retired Air Force veteran who also lived in Beaumont, said he attended middle school with “Sham,” as he was called at the time, and described him as “quiet, reserved and really, really intelligent.”
“He didn’t cause any trouble at all,” Pousson said. “He had good grades and was always well dressed, in polo shirts and button-downs.”
They met again on Facebook after Jabbar ended his active military service in 2015, and that’s when Pousson noticed that Jabbar had become deeply committed to his Muslim faith.
“Before, if he was interested in it, he didn’t talk about it openly or loudly,” Pousson said. However, he said that at that point, Jabbar was posting a lot about religion on Facebook.
“It was never a case of Muslim extremism and he never threatened any violence, but you could tell he was really committed.”
Still, the attack was a shock to him.
“It’s a 180-degree turn from the quiet, reserved person I knew,” Pousson said.
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Jabbar has complained in the past about the challenges of veteran life. In a 2015 interview with Georgia State University’s student newspaper, Jabbar said the Department of Veterans Affairs has made it more difficult to receive GI Bill pay. He attended the university from 2015 to 2017, when he earned a bachelor’s degree in computer information systems, the school said.
“It’s such a big agency,” Jabbar explained to a student reporter. One missed signature or piece of paper could mean slipping through the cracks. He also said it was difficult for him to communicate without using military jargon.
Jabbar recently tried to sell the property. In a 2020 YouTube video believed to have been posted by Jabbar, he spoke positively about his skills, his long history at Beaumont and his military service.
“I have lived here all my life, except for my military trips,” he said.
On his now-deleted Twitter account, Jabbar wrote in 2021 about his work in real estate and his interest in cryptocurrency. He also expressed an interest in firearms, once writing, “On a Saturday morning it’s the gun shooting type.”
He later posted a photo of two people standing while a third person fired a gun. An account with an identical username on a firearms classifieds site shows that the user is trying to sell a pistol, ammunition, and a shotgun. Posts on this website were published in November and December.
It didn’t appear that Jabbar had ever been violent. Texas criminal records show minor offenses two decades ago – theft in 2002 and driving with an invalid license in 2005.
The vehicle used in the New Orleans attack, a Ford electric pickup truck, was registered to a Houston resident who offered the vehicles for rent on a car-sharing website. The man, who asked that his name not be published, said the FBI called him and explained that he was not driving the vehicle but had rented it. He said federal agents asked him not to discuss the case publicly.
During his second divorce in January 2022, Jabbar wrote an email to his wife’s lawyer describing financial problems.
“I can’t afford to pay for the house,” he wrote.
“The repayment is more than $US27,000 ($43,000) past due and is at risk of foreclosure if we delay the resolution of the divorce.”
He said in an email that the business corporation he founded, a real estate company, lost more than $28,000 last year and incurred $16,000 in credit card debt.
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At the same time, in a court document from the end of the same year, he stated that he worked for the accounting firm Deloitte and earned about $120,000 a year. A company spokesman said Jabbar had served in an “worker position since being hired in 2021.”
“To me, he wasn’t a terrorist,” said Marilyn Bradford, 70, who lived on Jabbar’s floor in the Houston apartment building where he lived from 2021 until about a year ago.
She said that before he left, he gave her a dryer, a steamer and other household items.
“I said, ‘Oh, are you giving me something to recollect you by?’ He laughed, as he at all times does,” she added. “He was an outcast. I was the only person he really talked to. I talked about him like my friend.”
Bradford said she saw him spending the weekend together with his three children and he was at all times helpful.
“He asked, ‘Ma’am, do you want me to help you with this?’ He helped me carry the groceries.”
This article was originally published in .
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