Police ID driver of exploded Cybertruck, can't see motive

What happened

Law enforcement officials said Thursday that a highly decorated Army Green Beret shot himself in the head right before a rented Tesla Cybertruck he drove from Colorado exploded in the valet lane of the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas on Wednesday. Master Sgt. Matthew Livelsberger, 37, was on approved leave from his Special Forces unit in Germany, Army officials said. He was the only person killed in the blast, though seven bystanders suffered minor injuries.

Who said what

Military officials "remain baffled" at "how or why a model soldier with a stellar record" ended up at the center of what could be a "terrorist event," The Wall Street Journal said. That the exploding truck, "packed with off-the-shelf ingredients" like firecrackers and small propane canisters, caused so little damage also "prompted a lot of head-scratching," The New York Times said.

Livelsberger had the "skills and experience to produce a larger and more deadly explosion if he had wanted," The Washington Post said, citing a Special Forces officer who served with him. "I'm comfortable calling it a suicide with the bombing that occurred immediately thereafter," Las Vegas Sheriff Kevin McMahill said at a news conference. "I'm not giving it any other labels."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

What next?

Investigators have found "no definitive link" between the Cybertruck explosion and a truck attack in New Orleans that killed at least 14 New Year's revelers hours earlier, the FBI said. There were "striking — if superficial — similarities" between the incidents, the Post said, including that Livelsberger and New Orleans assailant Shamsud-Din Jabbar both served in the Army, and at the same North Carolina base and in Afghanistan, though there's no record their paths ever crossed.