(NEW ORLEANS) — The man suspected of carrying out the New Year’s attack in New Orleans, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, had a checkered marital history punctuated by multiple divorces and financial difficulty, according to court records reviewed by ABC News.
The records also show that after his military service, Jabbar worked for two of the nation’s largest professional services firms, Ernst & Young and Deloitte, as he aimed to grow his own fledgling real estate business.
Jabbar has been identified by the FBI as the suspect in the deadly attack on New Year’s revelers. At least 15 people were killed and over two dozen injured after a rented Ford pickup truck was driven through a crowd on Bourbon Street at a high rate of speed early Wednesday, officials said.
Jabbar, who police said was killed during the attack, was a 42-year-old U.S.-born citizen and U.S. Army veteran from Texas, according to the FBI.
As of 2022, while employed by Deloitte, documents show Jabbar was making close to $125,000 a year — a salary which was chipped away at by court-ordered payments for his children from a past marriage and weighed down by credit card and mortgage debt.
In 2012 in Harris County, Texas, ex-wife Nakedra Charrlle Jabbar successfully sued him for child support payments for the couple’s two girls, who were eight and three years old at the time, according to court records.
Four years later, in 2016, Jabbar filed for divorce from another wife, Tiera Symone Jabbar, in Dekalb County, Georgia. The complaint form, filled out in handwriting, says the two married in Sept. 2013 but separated less than two and a half years later in Feb. 2016. Under grounds for divorce, Jabbar checked the box on the form that read “our marriage is irretrievably broken,” adding that the pair “can no longer live together and there is no hope that we will get back together.”
In July 2020, in Fort Bend County, Texas, Jabbar filed for divorce from wife Shaneen Chantil Jabbar, whom he married in Nov. 2017, according to court filings. But the pair jointly sought to dismiss the suit only a month after it was filed, saying they “both no longer desire[d] to prosecute his/her respective suits against the other party” — a request that the court granted.
However, when Jabbar again filed for divorce a year later, his then-wife responded with a counterclaim that sparked a lengthy battle of briefs indicating apparent bad blood between them that may have at least in part stemmed from financial difficulties.
In one filing, Shaneen’s lawyer accused Jabbar of “flagrant disregard” of his financial duties to their household — alleging that during their marriage, Jabbar “was entrusted with the management, control, and disposition of substantially all community estate funds.”
Though Shaneen “trusted and believed” her husband “would faithfully execute” his management, he violated their “fiduciary relationship,” his soon-to-be ex’s lawyer alleged.
Shamsud-Din Jabbar “has intentionally and in flagrant disregard of the duties as manager and trustee of the community funds mismanaged the community estate, all in fraud of” his wife’s financial interest, she said.
Shaneen’s filings also claimed that Jabbar withheld important information from the court about his retirement savings, with one record from July 2022 alleging Jabbar had failed to produce statements showing his participation in the retirement plan at Ernst & Young, where the filing indicates Jabbar worked prior to joining Deloitte.
The acrimonious split from Shaneen also featured Jabbar breaking with his own laywer. Attorney Robert Tsai — who represented Jabbar in his 2012 divorce — withdrew from the case in Sept. 2021, citing an inability to “effectively communicate” with his client “in a manner consistent with good attorney-client relations.” Court records indicate Jabbar represented himself through the remainder of the divorce proceedings.
In court records Jabbar laid out some of his financial difficulties as he explained why he sought a divorce settlement that would have the couple selling their house and splitting the proceeds. The property management firm Jabbar founded, Blue Meadow Properties, was failing to produce any revenue and was in fact losing money, per his submissions to the court.
“Time is of the essence,” he wrote in an email to his wife’s lawyer on Jan 6, 2022. “l can not afford the house payment. It is past due in excess of $27,000 and in danger of foreclosure if we delay settling the divorce. The home was not in default at the time we agreed to the temporary orders. l misunderstood the terms of the loan modification I had applied for at the time.”
Jabbar’s filings in the 2022 divorce from Shaneen show he was already responsible for paying $2,200 in child support per month following his divorce from Nakedra. Ultimately, Jabbar was ordered to pay an additional $1,353 a month in child support to help care for the son he shared with Shaneen, according to the documents.
The court ordered Deloitte to withhold the extra child support from his paychecks.
His ex-wife Shaneen got the house, despite Jabbar’s asking that the asset be sold and the proceeds split, court records show. She received primary custody of their son, though Jabbar got visitation rights, the records said.
During their divorce, court records show both Jabbard and Shaneen took four hours’ instruction on parenting from the “Texas Cooperative Parenting Course,” and each received a certificate indicating they had “successfully completed” the course and were “hereby committed to working with the other parent in the best interest of their child/children.” Jabbar’s is dated Aug. 20, 2021. Shaneen’s is dated Aug. 30, 2021.
ABC News attempted on Wednesday to contact Nakedra, Tiera and Shaneen. Phone calls or text messages were not returned.
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