Driver of Tesla Cybertruck that exploded at Trump hotel in Las Vegas was an active-duty Army Green Beret, source says
By Hanna Park, John Miller, Haley Britzky, Kyung Lah, Eric Levenson and Alaa Elassar, CNN
(CNN) — The driver of the Tesla Cybertruck that exploded outside the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas on Wednesday has been identified as Matthew Alan Livelsberger, an active-duty US Army Green Beret, according to a law enforcement source familiar with the investigation.
Livelsberger was an Army Special Forces operations master sergeant, a senior enlisted rank, according to four US officials. He was on active duty in Germany with the 10th Special Forces Group but was on leave at the time of the incident, three officials said.
The US Army said Thursday in a statement Livelsberger was on leave at the time of his death, though did not specifically say he died in the Vegas explosion. The US Special Forces, commonly known as the “Green Berets,” bill themselves as an elite fighting force specializing in guerrilla warfare and unconventional tactics abroad.
Las Vegas Sheriff Kevin McMahill said Thursday at a news conference the driver shot himself in the head prior to the blast that injured seven people outside the Trump hotel. While McMahill and others officials only referred to the driver as the “subject” and “person of interest,” they showed a photo of Livelsberger and gave his name at the news conference.
McMahill said authorities are not identifying Livelsberger as the person found inside the Cybertruck because the body was burned beyond recognition.
“I will not come back until I have the confirmation through DNA or medical records that this is indeed, in fact, the subject inside of the vehicle,” McMahill said.
McMahill said authorities “have confidence that this is in fact the same person” because the body in the vehicle had two tattoos, on the stomach and arm, which Livelsberger also had. Livelsberger’s wife identified the tattoos, a law enforcement official told CNN.
Spencer Evans, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Las Vegas Division, said the driver’s motive remains unclear and authorities are not aware of any connection “to any terrorist organizations around the world.”
The explosion bore some general similarities to the vehicle attack in New Orleans earlier Wednesday, as both involved a symbolic target on New Year’s Day, a truck rented through the website Turo and a suspect with a military background. Authorities said they are investigating possible links between the two attacks but repeatedly called the Vegas explosion an “isolated incident.”
“At this point, there is no definitive link between the attack here in New Orleans and the one in Las Vegas,” FBI deputy assistant director Christopher Raia said Thursday.
The FBI in Denver, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and the Colorado Springs Police Department are conducting “law enforcement activity” at a home in Colorado Springs related to the explosion, the FBI said.
How the incident unfolded
The Cybertruck was rented on December 28 in Denver and made stops at several Tesla charging stations in Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada, before entering Las Vegas in the early morning of New Year’s Day, McMahill said.
The truck was first spotted in the city at 7:29 a.m., drove up and down Las Vegas Boulevard and later arrived at the Trump Hotel, where a combination of fireworks, gas tanks and camping fuel in the bed of the vehicle were detonated by a device controlled by the driver, police said.
A CCTV video shown by the police captured the moment the truck exploded. In related social media footage, the vehicle is engulfed in smoke while being doused with water.
During a news conference, police shared footage revealing scorched gasoline containers and firework mortars found among the wreckage. Authorities are still working on accessing the footage from the cameras inside the Cybertruck, which likely captured video during the incident, McMahill said.
Guests who were staying at Trump International Hotel at the time of the explosion said the windows shook, even more than 40 floors up. The guests, who did not want to be publicly identified, said they saw smoke billowing in the stairwells and coming out of the elevator doors. Elevator service was shut down, and they had to stay on their floor.
On Thursday, damage from the explosion was visible in the Trump hotel’s valet area. Parts of the ceiling had smoke damage, and the gold awning had a hole several feet wide.
The FBI in Denver, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and the Colorado Springs Police Department were conducting “law enforcement activity” Thursday at a home in Colorado Springs related to the explosion, the FBI said.
What we know about the driver
A family member and former Army colleague described Livelsberger as a highly decorated combat veteran whose background in special forces and explosives seemed at odds with an impotent attack that relied, in part, on fireworks.
And, they said, Livelsberger had a strong love of country – particularly the president-elect.
“When President Trump was in office (Livelsberger) would comment on his Facebook page about the things President Trump had said or done or how he’s helping the military,” the relative, who asked not to be named, told CNN. “Matt had a lot of respect for Mr. Trump – he just loved the guy.”
Livelsberger was not affiliated with a political party, according to the Colorado Secretary of State voter registration database.
A fellow member of the Green Berets who served with Livelsberger in Afghanistan said a key focus of their mission was to dismantle a network of Taliban-aligned forces that had been detonating car bombs in and around Kabul in an effort to destabilize the government.
Livelsberger became a father in April last year, his former colleague said.
The military colleague said he was shocked by the incident in Las Vegas, especially given Livelsberger’s impressive credentials: a Green Beret with a background in communications, IT and tactical unmanned aerial vehicles.
The fellow soldier, who had kept in touch with Livelsberger since their deployment, said he didn’t know whether the explosion of the Cybertruck was in any way inspired by the kind of attacks that were so common a feature of the unit’s mission.
Some similarities to New Orleans attack
The explosion closely followed a deadly attack in New Orleans, where a driver with a US military background crashed a rented pickup truck into a crowd celebrating New Year’s on Bourbon Street early Wednesday morning, killing 14 people.
The man, who was killed in a firefight with police after the attack, was identified as an Army veteran from Texas and had an ISIS flag in his vehicle. He said in videos made before the attack that he had joined the terror group, authorities said.
Turo, which operates an online platform for car owners to lease their vehicles, reported that its service was used to rent vehicles involved in the tragic events in New Orleans and Las Vegas and it is cooperating with the authorities.
“We do not believe that either renter involved in the Las Vegas and New Orleans attacks had a criminal background that would have identified them as a security threat,” a Turo spokesperson told CNN.
Both men were stationed in North Carolina’s Fort Liberty, previously known as Fort Bragg, but there is no record they served in the same unit or during the same years, McMahill said Thursday. The men also served in Afghanistan in 2009 but McMahill said there were not in the same province or in the same unit.
“If these turn out to be simply similarities, very strange similarities to have, and so we’re not prepared to rule in or rule out anything at this point,” McMahill said. “We haven’t even gotten into the phones or the computers which are usually very, very instructive and informative to us as we investigate.”
The FBI has located phones and laptops, and residences are being searched in relation to both the Las Vegas and New Orleans incidents, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. There’s no evidence that anyone else was involved in orchestrating the Cybertruck incident, Mayorkas said.
Livelsberger was a member of the 10th Special Forces Group, which has members deployed to Germany where they work with the US military’s Africa Command. Special Forces units have been involved in multiple counterterrorism missions in Africa fighting local groups with connections to ISIS and al Qaeda. He had been deployed to Germany and returned to the US on leave around Christmastime, a defense official told CNN.
A LinkedIn page under the name of “Matt Livelsberger” shows a photograph of a special forces operator wearing a helmet, goggles and snow camouflage straddling a snowmobile with a scoped semi-automatic rifle. It lists Livelsberger’s experience as 19 years in the Army Special Forces with a specialization in “intelligence and operations.” Law enforcement officials confirmed to CNN they believed the page belonged to Livelsberger.
Police thank Elon Musk
The explosion could have been significantly worse if not for the vehicle’s body construction, which helped contain the blast, police said.
McMahill said the Cybertruck’s body construction significantly reduced damage in the hotel valet area, as most of the blast was directed upward, leaving the building’s front glass unbroken during the explosion.
“The fact that this was a Cybertruck really limited the damage that occurred inside of the valet because it had most of the blast. Up through the truck and out,” he said. “You’ll see that the front glass doors at the Trump hotel were not even broken by that blast which they were parked directly in front of.”
“I have to thank Elon Musk specifically,” McMahill added, noting that Tesla Motors’ CEO gave authorities “quite a bit of additional information,” including directly sending them video from its charging stations to help with their efforts to track the driver.
”We have now confirmed that the explosion was caused by very large fireworks and/or a bomb carried in the bed of the rented Cybertruck and is unrelated to the vehicle itself,” Musk said in a post on X.
“All vehicle telemetry was positive at the time of the explosion,” Musk added, referring to the automaker’s system that collects and transmits data about a vehicle’s performance and status in real time and can monitor mileage and track the distance traveled, among other features.
Officials also noted the implications of the Tesla vehicle and the hotel’s namesake.
“It’s a Tesla truck, and we know that Elon Musk is working with President-elect Trump, and it’s the Trump tower,” McMahill, sheriff of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, said Wednesday. “So, there’s obviously things to be concerned about there, and that’s something we continue to look at.”
Musk has emerged as a key player in Trump’s orbit during the transition to a second White House term. The president-elect has tapped the tech magnate, along with former Republican presidential contender Vivek Ramaswamy, to oversee a new Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, aimed at cutting government spending.
Update: An earlier version of this story included the attacker in the number of people killed in New Orleans. At least 14 people were killed. The attacker is also dead.
CNN’s Chelsea Bailey, Brynn Gingras, Lauren Mascarenhas, Natasha Chen, Paul P. Murphy and Maureen Chowdhury contributed to this report.
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