A Tesla Cybertruck Explosion at the Trump International Hotel: Detection of Firework and Explosions in Las Vegas, Nevada, on Wednesday
There was an explosion outside the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada on Wednesday. A video shared on X shows the truck engulfed in flames just outside the hotel’s lobby, with the person who captured it saying the Cybertruck “blew up.”
The luggage is shown in the footage and I and my husband were standing near it. I just saw it pull up, and it went down like a bus. It first looked like fireworks. I immediately thought it could be a bomb, and I ran.
We haven’t found a video of the car catching fire, but several other people on X say they witnessed a blast and captured videos of smoke rising. Stephen Felando claimed the windows shook violently on the 53rd floor of the building; Max Radford claimed there were multiple explosions.
Las Vegas Metropolitan Police and Clark County Fire Department are working to remove the body of a person who died in a pickup truck. Several people had injuries and were taken to the hospital.
According to a law enforcement official, the truck was rented via the Turo app and appeared to have a load of fireworks. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
On Wednesday, Las Vegas police said that crews pulled gasoline canisters, camp fuel canisters and large firework mortars from the back of the Cybertruck. Seven people have been injured in the explosion that was caught on video.
“The whole Tesla senior team is investigating this matter right now,” Musk said in an earlier post on the platform after attending a New Year’s Eve party at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. “We’ve never seen anything like this.”
Law enforcement officials have not ruled out terrorism as a possible motive, a person familiar with the matter said. The person was not authorized to speak on the details of the investigation.
“I know you have a lot of questions,” Jeremy Schwartz, acting special agent in charge for the FBI’s Las Vegas office, told reporters. “We don’t have a lot of answers.”
Master Sergeant Mattelan Livelsberger, the Driver of the Cybertuck, Exploded in the French Quarter on New Year’s Day
There was an explosion and President Joe Biden was briefed on it. The truck explosion came hours after a driver rammed a truck into a crowd in New Orleans’ famed French Quarter early on New Year’s Day, killing at least 10 people before being shot to death by police.
The first one where we saw the fire, the second one, the battery, and the big one that smoked the whole area, was when everyone was told to evacuate, Bruce said.
Authorities have identified the driver of the Cybertruck that exploded in front of the Trump hotel in Las Vegas as 37-year-old Master Sgt. Matthew Alan Livelsberger. Police said in a news conference they don’t know the full extent of his wounds because he was burned beyond recognition. He’s been waiting for the tests to confirm his identity.
According to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Sheriff’s office, Livelsberger was shot in the head before the Cybertuck exploded.
The driver of the pickup truck that rammed into a crowd in New Orleans on New Year’s Day, killing 14 people and injuring many others, acted alone and there is not any other threat to Bourbon Street, according to the FBI.
A source familiar with Livelsberger’s background who was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter tells NPR’s Tom Bowman that Livelsberger was deployed five times to Afghanistan on combat missions. He hadn’t been deployed for a year.
The New Orleans truck attack happened on Dec. 31, 2008 and authorities are unsure whether the perpetrator was a lone wolf act
Jeremy Schwartz, acting special agent in charge of the FBI in Las Vegas, said the agency was working closely with area law enforcement to learn more about the explosion. The FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force was working to determine whether the explosion was an act of terrorism.
“We do not assess at this point that anyone else is involved in this attack,” Christopher Raia, FBI deputy assistant director with the agency’s counterterrorism division, told reporters during a press conference.
Raia said investigators are combing through five electronic devices — three cellphones and two laptops — and there is “nothing to indicate through call records, through anything on those devices, through interviews, through anything in our systems that he was aided in this attack by anyone.”
The FBI was looking for more information about additional suspects who could have been involved in the attack after they said Wednesday that it was probably not a lone wolf act.
The attack was being investigated as an act of terrorism after the man who carried it out was killed in a gunfight with police. A black flag with ties to ISIS was attached to the back of the pickup truck and while an exact motive is unclear, Raia said Jabbar was “100% inspired” by the terrorist group.
Bourbon Street, which has been closed as authorities investigate, has been cleaned overnight and was reopened to pedestrians on Thursday. Fourteen yellow roses have been placed on the sidewalk near Canal Street as a makeshift memorial for each of those killed in the speeding rampage.
The Sugar Bowl, a nationally televised game that is part of the college football playoffs, was slated to take place in New Orleans on Wednesday night but was postponed until Thursday afternoon.
When asked about the security measures in the city, Gov. Jeff Landry said that officials had reinforced the area and put additional assets in place.
“I don’t like to give specifics because I don’t like to tell the enemy what we got,” he said. “I can say that we’re in better shape than we were before, but I don’t know how to tell,” he said. There is a lot of law enforcement resources being utilized to finish the investigation.
On the link between a Cybertruck explosion and a New Orleans attack: an FBI investigation of a man indicted on federal explosives charges
Raia said there is currently no definitive link between a Cybertruck explosion in Las Vegas and the attack in New Orleans, and the suspect was killed inside the vehicle.
The FBI says that Jabbar, who was not a citizen of the U.S., had been discharged from the Army. An Army spokesman confirmed that he was an IT specialist in the army reserve until July 2020, but he also served as a Human Resource Specialist and an Information Technology Specialist. In February 2009, Jabbar deployed to Afghanistan where he served for about 11 months. He left the service with the rank of staff sergeant.
The FBI posted on social media that there is no threat to the residents in the area after the search of the home of a man who was indicted on federal explosives charges. The Texas Newsroom reported that a neighbor, who didn’t know Jabbar by name, described the suspect as quiet and their interactions as normal.
