Man found dead in Cybertruck explosion outside Trump hotel in Vegas was shot, sheriff says
The highly decorated army soldier inside the Tesla Cybertruck that burst into flames outside U.S. president-elect Donald Trump’s Las Vegas hotel shot himself in the head before the explosion, officials said Thursday.
They said he likely planned to cause more damage, but the explosive was rudimentary and the steel-sided vehicle absorbed much of the force.
Clark County Sheriff Kevin McMahill said at a news conference that a handgun was found at the feet of the man, who officials believe is Matthew Livelsberger. Officials believe the shot was self-inflicted.
Damage from the blast was mostly limited to the interior of the truck. The blast “vented out and up” and didn’t hit the Trump hotel doors just a few metres away, the sheriff said.
“The level of sophistication is not what we would expect from an individual with this type of military experience,” said Kenny Cooper, a special agent in charge for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Among other charred items found inside the truck were a second firearm, a number of fireworks, passport, military ID, credit cards, an iPhone and a smartwatch, McMahill said.
Authorities said both guns were purchased legally. Investigators have not definitively identified the remains as Livelsberger, but the IDs and tattoos on the body “give a strong indication that it’s him,” the sheriff said.
Livelsberger served in the Green Berets, highly trained special forces who work to counter terrorism abroad and train partners, the army said in a statement. He had served in the army since 2006, rising through the ranks with a long career of overseas assignments, deploying twice to Afghanistan and serving in Ukraine, Tajikistan, Georgia and Congo, the army said.
He was awarded two Bronze Stars, including one with a valour device for courage under fire, a combat infantry badge and an army commendation medal with valour. Livelsberger was on approved leave when he died, according to the statement.
The FBI said Thursday in a post on X that it was “conducting law enforcement activity” at a home in Colorado Springs, Colo., related to Wednesday’s explosion but provided no other details.
The explosion of the truck, packed with firework mortars and camp fuel canisters, came hours after Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42, rammed a truck into a crowd in New Orleans’s famed French Quarter early on New Year’s Day, killing at least 14 people before being shot to death by police. That crash was being investigated as a terrorist attack.
The FBI said Thursday that they believe Jabbar acted alone, reversing its position from a day earlier that he likely worked with others.
Both Livelsberger and Jabbar spent time at the base formerly known as Fort Bragg, a massive Army base in North Carolina that is home to multiple army special operations units.
However, one of the officials who spoke to The Associated Press said there is no overlap in their assignments at the base, now called Fort Liberty.
FBI deputy assistant director Christopher Raia said Thursday that officials have found “no definitive link” between the New Orleans attack and the truck explosion in Las Vegas.
The motivation behind Wednesday’s Cybertruck explosion in Las Vegas is currently unknown, authorities said at a news conference as they acknowledged ‘it’s not lost on us that it’s in front of the Trump building, that it’s a Tesla vehicle.’ They also addressed speculation about possible links between the active-duty soldier whose remains they believe were found inside the vehicle and the army veteran who rammed a truck into a crowd in New Orleans just hours earlier.
Seven people nearby suffered minor injuries when the Tesla truck exploded. Video showed a tumble of charred fireworks mortars, canisters and other explosive devices crowded into the back of the pickup. The truck bed walls were still intact because the blast shot straight up rather than to the sides.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk said Wednesday afternoon on X that “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.”
“All vehicle telemetry was positive at the time of the explosion,” Musk wrote.
Musk has recently become a member of Trump’s inner circle. Neither Trump nor Musk was in Las Vegas early Wednesday. Both had attended Trump’s New Year’s Eve party at his South Florida estate.
Authorities know who rented the truck with the Turo app in Colorado, said McMahill, the elected sheriff of Clark County, which includes Las Vegas, on Wednesday. He did not release the person’s ID, however.
Published at Thu, 02 Jan 2025 18:55:39 +0000
Israeli airstrikes kill at least 54 across Gaza, including head of police, officials say
Israeli airstrikes killed at least 54 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip on Thursday, including 11 people in a tent encampment sheltering displaced families, medics said.
They said the 11 included women and children in the Al-Mawasi district, which was designated as a humanitarian zone for civilians earlier in the war between Israel and Gaza’s ruling Hamas militant group, now in its 15th month.
The director general of Gaza’s police department, Mahmoud Salah, and his aide, Hussam Shahwan, were killed in the strike, according to the Gaza’s Interior Ministry.
“By committing the crime of assassinating the director general of police in the Gaza Strip, the occupation is insisting on spreading chaos in the [enclave] and deepening the human suffering of citizens,” it added in a statement.
The Israeli military said it had conducted an intelligence-based strike in Al-Mawasi, just west of the city of Khan Younis, and eliminated Shahwan, calling him the head of Hamas security forces in southern Gaza. It made no mention of Salah’s death.
Other Israeli airstrikes killed at least 26 Palestinians, including six in the Interior Ministry headquarters in Khan Younis and others in north Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp, the Shati (Beach) camp and central Gaza’s Maghazi camp.
Israel’s military said it had targeted Hamas militants who intelligence indicated were operating in a command and control center “embedded inside the Khan Younis municipality building in the Humanitarian Area.”
“As the year begins, we got reports of yet another attack on Al-Mawasi with dozens of people killed and injured. Another reminder that there is no humanitarian zone let alone a ‘safe zone’ [in Gaza],” Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said in a post on X.
“Everyday without a ceasefire will bring more tragedy.”
Asked about Thursday’s reported death toll, a spokesperson for the Israeli military said it followed international law in waging the war in Gaza and that it took “feasible precautions to mitigate civilian harm.”
Later on Thursday, separate Israeli airstrikes killed at least four people on Jala Street in downtown Gaza City and two in its Zeitoun district, medics said.
The Israeli military has accused Gaza militants of using built-up residential areas for cover. Hamas denies this.
Hamas’s smaller ally Islamic Jihad said it fired rockets into the southern Israeli kibbutz of Holit near Gaza on Thursday. The Israeli military said it intercepted one projectile in the area that had crossed from southern Gaza.
Israel has killed more than 45,500 Palestinians in the war, according to Gaza’s health ministry. Most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been displaced and much of the tiny, heavily built-up coastal territory is in ruins.
The war was triggered by Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel, in which 1,200 people were killed and another 251 taken hostage to Gaza, according to Israeli tallies. Hamas ally Islamic Jihad also took part in the assault.
Hostage tried to take own life
An Israeli hostage held by Gaza’s Islamic Jihad militant group has tried to take his own life, the spokesperson for the movement’s armed wing said in a video posted on Telegram on Thursday.
One of the group’s medical teams intervened and prevented him from dying, the Al-Quds Brigades spokesperson added, without going into any more detail on the hostage’s identity or current condition.
Israeli authorities did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Islamic Jihad spokesman Abu Hamza said the hostage had tried to take his own life three days ago due to his psychological state, without going into more details.
Abu Hamza accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government of setting new conditions that had led to “the failure and delay” of negotiations for the hostage’s release.
The man had been scheduled to be released with other hostages under the conditions of the first stage of an exchange deal with Israel, Abu Hamza said. He did not specify when the man had been scheduled to be released or under which deal.
Arab mediators’ efforts, backed by the United States, have so far failed to conclude a ceasefire in Gaza, under a possible deal that would also see the release of Israeli hostages in return for the freedom of Palestinians in Israeli prisons.
Islamic Jihad’s armed wing had issued a decision to tighten the security and safety measures for the hostages, Abu Hamza added.
In July, Islamic Jihad’s armed wing said some Israeli hostages had tried to kill themselves after it started treating them in what it said was the same way that Israel treated Palestinian prisoners.
“We will keep treating Israeli hostages the same way Israel treats our prisoners,” Abu Hamza said at that time. Israel has dismissed accusations that it mistreats Palestinian prisoners.
Published at Thu, 02 Jan 2025 14:46:40 +0000
