Las Vegas Tesla Explosion: The man in the Tesla Cybertruck that exploded outside President-elect Donald Trump’s Las Vegas hotel was shot in the head before the explosion, Clark County Sheriff Kevin McMahill said Thursday. A handgun was found at his feet, McMahill said.
The man in the pickup truck was identified as Matthew Livelsberger, an active-duty U.S. Army soldier and member of the elite Green Beret. The Pentagon said he had been in the military since 2006, rising through the ranks, and was on approved leave when he died.
He had been awarded five Bronze Stars, including one with an additional Medal of Valor, for courage in combat. He also received an Infantry Combat Badge and an Army Commendation Medal with a Medal of Valor. A statement said Livelsberger was on approved leave when he died.
The FBI said in a post on X on Thursday that it was “conducting a law enforcement action” at a house in Colorado Springs in connection with Wednesday’s explosion, but provided no other details.
The explosion came hours after Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42, was shot and killed by police after he drove a pickup truck into a crowd in New Orleans’s famous French Quarter early on New Year’s Day, killing at least 14 people.
Both Levsberg and Jabbar spent time at the base formerly known as Fort Bragg, a large Army base in North Carolina that is home to several Army special operations units. But an official told the AP that the two men’s assignments at the base, now Fort Liberty, did not overlap.
FBI Deputy Assistant Director Chris Raia said Thursday that officials have found “no clear link” between the New Orleans attack and the pickup truck explosion in Las Vegas.
Seven people were slightly injured when the Tesla truck exploded. Video footage showed the back of the pickup truck covered in charred fireworks, canisters, and other explosive devices. The truck bed and surroundings remained intact because the explosion was directed upwards rather than around.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk said on X on Wednesday afternoon (January 1), “We have now confirmed that the explosion was caused by a very large number of fireworks and/or bombs carried in the cabin of this rented Cybertruck and had nothing to do with the vehicle itself.”
All vehicle telemetry data was good at the time of the explosion,” Musk said.
Musk has recently become a member of Trump’s inner circle. Neither Trump nor Musk were in Las Vegas on Wednesday morning. Both attended the New Year’s Eve party held at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in southern Florida.
Clark County, whose jurisdiction includes Las Vegas, said on Wednesday that authorities know who rented the truck using the Turo app in Colorado. However, he did not reveal that person’s identity.
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