Officials have identified the person found dead inside the Tesla Cybertruck that exploded outside the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas on New Year’s Day as a US Army soldier from Colorado, and say he died by suicide in the vehicle before the blast.
“The individual had sustained a gunshot wound to the head prior to the detonation of the vehicle,” Las Vegas Sheriff Kevin McMahill told reporters at a news conference on Thursday, citing findings from the coroner’s office.
He added that a handgun was found at the man’s feet.
Police identified the Cybertruck driver as Matthew Livelsberger, an active duty army soldier from Colorado Springs, and said he acted alone. Seven other people were wounded when the Cybertruck exploded.
Livelsberger was assigned to the Army Special Operations Command and was on approved leave at the time of his death, an unnamed army official told the Reuters news agency.
A US official told Reuters that Livelsberger was a highly decorated Green Beret who had served in various roles with the US military since 2006, with stints in Afghanistan, Ukraine and Tajikistan, among other locations.
Kenny Cooper, a special agent for the the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, expressed surprise that a military member was involved in the explosion, which did little damage except to the Cybertruck.
“The level of sophistication is not what we would expect from an individual with this type of military experience,” Kenny Cooper said.
Early investigations indicate the Cybertruck has been carrying fireworks and camp fuel canisters when it exploded.
While the blast occurred at a hotel named for President-elect Donald Trump, a co-owner of the property who is set to take office for a second term in the White House on January 20, authorities are still working to determine a motive.
“It’s not lost on us that it’s in front of the Trump building, that it’s a Tesla vehicle, but we don’t have information at this point that definitively tells us or suggests it was because of this particular ideology,” said Spencer Evans, the Las Vegas Federal Bureau of Investigation’s special agent in charge.
In a brief statement earlier on Thursday, the FBI said investigators had searched a home in Colorado in connection to the incident but offered no further details.
The explosion took place on the same day as a deadly car-ramming attack in the southern city of New Orleans that killed at least 15 people, including the suspect.
At least 35 other people were injured in that attack, according to an official estimate on Thursday. That incident is being investigated as a terrorist attack, and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) were allegedly discovered in coolers left on the street at the crime scene.
But authorities have stopped short of connecting the two incidents.
At a news briefing in New Orleans on Thursday, Christopher Raia, a deputy assistant director from the FBI’s counterterrorism division, emphasised he has found no connection so far.
“We are following up on all potential leads and not ruling everything out,” Raia told reporters. “However, at this point, there is no definitive link between the attack here in New Orleans and the one in Las Vegas.”
Law enforcement initially believed that the suspect in the New Orleans attack, 42-year-old Shamsud-Din Jabbar, had received assistance from others.
But on Thursday, Raia said authorities now believe Jabbar acted alone and that the initial reports of accomplices were likely spurred by witnesses who reported passersby examining the two coolers with the IEDs, without knowing what was inside.
Outgoing President Joe Biden echoed Raia’s remarks in a White House ceremony later in the day, saying Jabbar appeared to be a lone wolf.
“We’re also continuing to investigate whether or not there’s any connection between the New Orleans attack and the explosion in Las Vegas,” Biden said. “As of now, I’ve just been briefed they have not found any evidence of such a connection thus far.”
Jabbar was shot and killed after exiting his vehicle and opening fire on police.
Biden said he asked his team to “accelerate” the investigations into the two New Year’s Day incidents.
Both the New Orleans car-ramming and the Las Vegas Cybertruck explosion involved vehicles that had been rented through the car rental app Turo.
Livelsberger and Jabbar were also both military veterans who spent time at Fort Bragg, a North Carolina military installation now known as Fort Liberty.
But an anonymous official told The Associated Press that the two men were not stationed at the base at the same time.
