(NBC) The New Orleans truck attacker built two bombs using what investigators believe was an explosive so powerful that they could have sprayed shrapnel hundreds of yards and potentially killed or wounded hundreds of people.
The bombs did not detonate on New Year’s Day. But experts say the devices Shamsud-Din Jabbar built with a compound believed to be RDX would have had devastating effects were it not for an amateurish blunder.
“As horrible as it is that he killed and injured all of these people, it could have been exponentially worse in the truest sense of the term had these devices actually functioned,” said Scott Sweetow, a retired executive with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and former director of the FBI’s Terrorist Explosive Device Analytical Center. “You’d be looking at literally hundreds of casualties.”
