Questions remain about soldier's motive in Cybertruck explosion outside Trump's Las Vegas hotel
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Investigators know that a highly decorated Army soldier shot himself in the head inside a Tesla Cybertruck packed with fireworks just before it exploded outside Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas on New Year's Day, but authorities say there are questions about why he chose that car and location.
“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,” Spencer Evans, the Las Vegas FBI’s special agent in charge, said Thursday at a news conference.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has recently become a member of President-elect Donald Trump’s inner circle. Neither Trump nor Musk was in Las Vegas early Wednesday, the day of the explosion. Both had attended Trump’s New Year’s Eve party at his South Florida estate.
Musk spent an estimated $250 million during the presidential campaign to support Trump, who has named Musk, the world’s richest man, to co-lead a new effort to find ways to cut the government’s size and spending. Investigators have identified the Tesla driver — who was burned beyond recognition — as Matthew Livelsberger, a 37-year-old Green Beret from Colorado Springs, Colorado. The Clark County coroner’s office said his death was a suicide caused by the gunshot wound.
Asked Friday about whether Livelsberger had been struggling with any mental health issues that may have prompted his suicide, Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh told reporters that “the department has turned over all medical records to local law enforcement.”.
