The man who died in an explosion inside a Tesla Cybertruck outside of Donald Trump’s hotel in Las Vegas hours on New Year’s Day has been identified as a U.S. Army veteran.
Matthew Livelsberger has been linked by investigators as the man who detonated the vehicle outside the Trump International Hotel on Wednesday morning. Livelsberger died in the blast, with seven others sustaining minor injuries, police said.
The incident in Las Vegas was reported shortly after 15 people were killed in New Orleans, after Shamsud-Din Jabbar – another military veteran – rammed a truck into New Year’s Day revelers in the city’s packed French Quarter, though it is currently unknown if the two incidents were linked.
Here’s what we know about the suspect in the Las Vegas explosion:
Who was Matthew Livelsberger?
Matthew Livelsberger was a 37-year-old army veteran and member of the elite Green Berets from Colorado Springs.
Sources told Denver 7 that multiple addresses had been associated with Livelsberger in Colorado and FBI agents were investigating these properties.
According to a family member, Livelsberger “was a 100 percent patriot,” who loved the Army and was an ardent supporter of President-elect Donald Trump. Pictures from social media show him with a tattoo of a bald eagle and the American flag visible on his shoulder.
“He used to have all patriotic stuff on Facebook, he was 100 percent loving the country,” his uncle, Dean Livelsberger, told The Independent. “He loved Trump, and he was always a very, very patriotic soldier, a patriotic American. It’s one of the reasons he was in Special Forces for so many years. It wasn’t just one tour of duty.”
Livelsberger divorced his first wife, who now lives in South Florida with her new husband, several years ago, but shares a newborn with his new partner, and in September, posted a picture on Facebook of himself cradling the infant in his arms, according to his uncle.
Over the past few months, an array of photos Livelsberger posted from Germany, including pictures of himself proposing to his partner, and the ring he gave her, have disappeared.
Where did he serve?
Livelsberger was in the U.S. Army for 19 years, 18 of which were in the elite Special Forces.
He is believed to have joined the Green Berets as a communicaton’s specialist in January 2006, before becoming an operations manager and team sergeant in February 2023. The profile picture on his LinkedIn account shows a man sporting winter gear armed with a rifle, standing atop of a snowmobile in mountainous terrain.
His most recent role, from November 2024, was listed as a Remote and Autonomous Systems Manager for the Army. Livelsberger was stationed in Germany, and was on leave in Colorado Springs when he rented the Cybertruck and drove to Nevada, law enforcement sources said.
“Matt was a very skilled warrior, and he would be able to make — if it was him, and if he did this — he would’ve been able to make a more sophisticated explosive than using propane tanks and camping fuel,” Dean Livelsberger told The Independent.
“He was what you might call a ‘supersoldier.’ If you ever read about the things he was awarded, and the experience he had, some of it doesn’t make sense, when he had the skills and ability to make something more, let’s say, ‘efficient.’ His skills were enormous from what he had been taught in the military.”
Livelsberger earned a summa cum laude – an award given to the students earning the highest grades in their class – after graduating from Norwich University in Vermont with a degree in Strategic Studies and Defense Analysis, according to his LinkedIn profile.
It also states he earned the Department of State Meritorious Honor Award for “interagency contributions that resulted in increased interoperability and efficiency while serving as the Operations Sergeant at Special Operations Command Forward”.
At the age of 22, Livelsberger began collecting clothes, toys and educational items for children and disseminating off humanitarian aid while serving a tour in Afghanistan, he told the News Journal in his native Ohio.
What happened in Las Vegas?
Just after 8.40 a.m. on Wednesday, Livelsberger detonated explosive devices inside the Tesla Cybertruck, which he had parked outside of the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas.
Video posted on social media showed different angles of the explosion, which appeared to include fireworks. Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department sheriff Kevin McMahill later confirmed that camp fuel canisters and “firework mortars” were found in the truck.
On Thursday, McMahill said investigators were confident that Livelsberger was the person in the vehicle, though his body was “burned beyond recognition.” The sheriff added that there was evidence that he had suffered a gunshot wound to the head prior to the blast.
“Complicating this identification of this individual, we also discovered through the coroner’s office that the individual had sustained a gunshot wound to the head prior to the detonation of the vehicle. One of the handguns was found at his feet inside of the vehicle,” McMahill said.
“I’m comfortable calling it a suicide with the bombing that occurred immediately thereafter. I’m not giving it any other labels.”
McMahill also said that it was likely that the reinforced exterior of the Cybertruck had limited both the number of victims and destruction to nearby surroundings, as the blast had been directed “up and through” the vehicle. “I just don’t think that it was done as well as he was expecting it to be done,” he said.
Connection to New Orleans attacker
Both the sheriff’s office and FBI investigators have said they are “well aware” of the incident in New Orleans, which happened just hours before the Las Vegas explosion.
According to a report from Denver 7, the two New Year’s Day attackers – Livelsberger and Jabbar – allegedly served at the same military base, Fort Bragg, and were deployed in Afghanistan around the same period. In addition, the pair both rented their vehicles via the carsharing company, Turo, officials have said.
Despite this, authorities have said that there is currently no formal connection between the two men.
At the time they were fighting in the Middle East, the US had around 100,000 military personnel in Afghanistan as part of President Barack Obama’s ‘troop surge.’
The FBI is investigating the possibility that both incidents were acts of terrorism, but an exact motive for the Las Vegas explosion is not yet known.
At a previous new conference, McMahill highlighted the link between Trump and Elon Musk, the Tesla founder and the president-elect’s incoming head of the unofficial Department of Government Efficiency, tasked with cutting trillions from government spending.
“Obviously a Cybertruck, the Trump hotel, there are lots of questions we have to answer,” McMahill said, underscoring the close relationship between the president-elect and Tesla founder Elon Musk
Musk took the opportunity to praise Tesla’s Cybertruck for being so sturdy that he said it helped contain the blast. “The evil knuckleheads picked the wrong vehicle for a terrorist attack. Cybertruck actually contained the explosion and directed the blast upwards,” he wrote in a post on X.
Source: independent.co.uk