The person who died in the detonation of a Tesla Cybertruck packed with explosives outside President Donald Trump's presidential hotel in Las Vegas was an active-duty U.S. military soldier, officials said Thursday.
Two law enforcement officers identified the man inside the pickup truck as Matthew Livelsberger. The officials spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation.
Livelsberger was a member of the military's elite Green Berets, a special forces unit and guerrilla warfare specialists, according to a military statement. He had been in the military since 2006, rising through the ranks, and was on authorized leave when he died, the statement said. The Green Berets work to combat terrorists abroad using unconventional methods.
Livelsberger spent time at the former Fort Bragg base, a large military base in North Carolina that is home to the Army's special forces command.
One person died and seven others were injured Wednesday when a Tesla Cybertruck that appeared to be carrying fireworks caught fire and exploded at the Trump hotel in Las Vegas, authorities said.
The FBI said Thursday in a post on X that it was “conducting a law enforcement operation” at a home in Colorado Springs, Colo., related to Wednesday's explosion but did not provide any other details.
The explosion on the truck, loaded with fireworks mortars and canisters of camp fuel, came hours after Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar, 42, drove a truck into a crowd in New Orleans' famous French Quarter early on New Year's Day, killing at least 14 people before. shot dead by the police.
That accident was being investigated as a terrorist attack and the police believe that the driver was alone.
Jabbar, a US Army veteran, also spent time at Fort Bragg, now known as Fort Liberty, but one officer said so far there is little over his activities there.
The investigation so far has not shown that the incidents in Las Vegas and New Orleans are related, and authorities do not believe the men knew each other, the two law enforcement officials said.
Seven people nearby were injured when the Tesla truck exploded.
The CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk, said on Wednesday afternoon on X that “we have now confirmed that the explosion was caused bya very large fireworks and/or bomb that was carried in the bed of the Cybertruck on rent and is not connected to the vehicle itself. “
“All vehicle telemetry was positive at the time of the explosion,” Musk wrote.
Authorities know who rented the truck with the Turo app in Colorado, the police department's Sheriff Kevin McMahill said Wednesday.
