A US journalist recalls interviewing the suspect of the New Orleans attack about issues concerning veterans back in 2015, shedding more light on the alleged terrorist.
Sean Keenan, currently a freelance reporter for the New York Times, interviewed Shamsud-Din Jabbar for his university newspaper.
Keenan was covering a story about Georgia State University students who had served in the military and were struggling to receive their Veteran Affairs benefits when he came into contact with Jabbar. Jabbar served actively and as a reserve in the US Army from 2007 to 2020.
Speaking to CNN about the interview, Keenan remembered, “We just discussed what it was like for him acclimating to civilian life and to college life, no less, after military service.”
Jabbar was a US army veteran from 2007 – 2020
(Image: (Image: Getty))
He recalled Jabbar being frustrated with the “labyrinthine nature of the VA programs.”
“I think a lot of military service people, they, you know, learn a certain jargon, they adopt a lexicon that is pretty exclusive to the environments that they’re in, whether it’s in basic training or combat zones or anywhere else.Keenan went on, ” Keenan continued. “And he found it difficult to not only go through college speaking with his professors but also he worried about trying to get a job after college and just still having these communicative issues.”
“He (also) lamented that a single missing piece of paperwork or a missed signature could just have you slip through the cracks, have you missing a check that you may direly depend on.”
Keenan remarked that nothing about Jabbar’s character raised any “red flags” at the time, recalling, “What little I remember about that interview was a very cool, calm and collected guy.”
Keegan noted the suspect had a “pretty reserved demeanour” and appeared “a little bit distant in the way that you sometimes see from veterans who have had difficult deployments.”
Shamsud-Din Jabbar, aged 42, was fatally shot by police after he reportedly drove into a crowd celebrating the new year on New Orleans’s Bourbon Street around 3:15 am local time. The tragic incident has resulted in 15 fatalities to date and left several others injured.
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