Police in the US were still investigating the possible motivations and background of Matthew Livelsberger, the decorated special forces soldier who died in an apparent suicide and vehicle bombing of a Trump hotel in Las Vegas on New Year’s Day.
Authorities said Livelsberger had written a note saying his actions were intended to serve as “wakeup call”. He apparently shot himself dead inside the Tesla seconds before the vehicle packed with fireworks, gas-filled tanks and camping fuel exploded outside the hotel lobby. Seven people suffered minor injuries, but little damage was done to the hotel.
The incident came hours after an Islamic State-inspired veteran killed 14 and wounded dozens in a truck attack, setting off speculation that the two incidents could be linked. However, no link has yet emerged and the two attacks are now widely seen as separate, though investigations continue.
On Friday, authorities investigating the Las Vegas bombing said Livelsberger had written a suicide note before orchestrating the explosion. “This was not a terrorist attack, it was a wakeup call. Americans only pay attention to spectacles and violence. What better way to get my point across than a stunt with fireworks and explosives,” Livelsberger wrote, according to authorities who released excerpts of the letter.
The note was sent to Shawn Ryan, a former navy Seal and CIA contractor, and has not been released in its entirety.
Earlier, playful texts to an ex-girlfriend sent by Livelsberger just two days before the incident showed that the Green Beret, who was on leave from his post in Europe, was excited to rent the Tesla Cybertruck used in the attack.
“I rented a Tesla Cybertruck. It’s the shit,” he wrote to Alicia Arritt on 29 December from Denver. “I feel like Batman or halo.” He said the vehicle was “ungodly” fast.
The texts, obtained by the Denver Gazette, showed that Livelsberger, 37, continued to communicate with Arritt, including on New Year’s Eve, when he sent photos and videos of the electric vehicle.
Arritt, who provided the texts to the outlet, said she had not heard from Livelsberger for three years after they broke up in 2021 and said she had no foresight that he was planning to blow up the hotel on the Las Vegas Strip.
FBI investigators told her that she was not the only ex-girlfriend Livelsberger had recently contacted.
Livelsberger was a resident of Colorado Springs, 60 miles south of Denver. He had spent most of his 19-year military career at Fort Carson and was last stationed at Camp Panzer Kaserne, just south-west of Stuttgart, Germany, where he worked as a remote and autonomous systems manager for the army.
He told Arritt in one of his texts reported by the outlet that he was “building drones in my new position”, adding: “You would love it.”
Arritt told the Denver Gazette that Livelsberger was deeply patriotic and she knew him as politically conservative. But she said his behavior had changed in 2019 after he returned from a tour in the Middle East with a traumatic brain injury.
Arritt said he had become isolated and the depressive symptoms he showed went untreated because “it’s not acceptable to seek treatment when someone is in special forces”.
Separately, the New York Post reported that Livelsberger’s wife had broken up with him six days before the explosion after an argument over apparent infidelity. The couple had recently welcomed a baby girl.
Investigators are now looking at whether Livelsberger’s motive was personal and not political. The latter assumption had gained traction given the conjunction of the Elon Musk-developed vehicle and the location of the attack.
“It’s not lost on us that it happened in front of the Trump building and a Tesla vehicle was used,” said Spencer Evans, the FBI special agent in charge, on Thursday.
Livelsberger’s uncle Dean Livelsberger told reporters on Thursday that his nephew was a “Rambo-type” patriot who loved his nation and Donald Trump. “He used to have all patriotic stuff on Facebook, he was 100% loving the country,” he told the Independent.
“He loved Trump, and he was always a very, very patriotic soldier, a patriotic American,” the uncle told the news website. “It’s one of the reasons he was in special forces for so many years. It wasn’t just one tour of duty.”
Seven people suffered minor injuries from the blast, while Livelsberger’s body was burned beyond recognition and he was identified from his passport and army ID found inside the vehicle.
Investigators are now looking into whether Livelsberger chose the steel-sided vehicle to limit civilian casualties. “Cybertruck actually contained the explosion and directed the blast upwards,” Musk, Tesla’s CEO, tweeted. “Not even the glass doors of the lobby were broken.”
