Federal and Nevada authorities said a Colorado Springs man shot himself just before a bomb detonated outside a Las Vegas Trump hotel, injuring seven others but doing little additional damage.
Las Vegas Sheriff Kevin McMahill confirmed that Master Sgt. Matthew Livelsberger, 37, who was on leave from the U.S. Army and had been living in Colorado Springs, was killed either by the gunshot or in the blast and was responsible for both.
But the motive for the New Year's Day bombing, and whether there was any coordination between the Las Vegas event and an earlier mass killing in New Orleans by another veteran remain a mystery. Federal officials said Thursday that they haven’t found any connection to domestic or overseas terrorist groups in the “global” investigation.
“No information that we're aware of right now connects this individual to any terrorist organization around the world,” said Spencer Evans, the special agent in charge of the FBI in Las Vegas at a press briefing. “But that's obviously the thrust of the investigation, is ruling out that there's any sort of terrorism nexus and then again, getting at what the ideology is.”
Livelsberger rented a Tesla Cybertruck in Colorado in late December through the Turo service and he picked up the truck in Denver.
He then drove it to Las Vegas over several days stopping in Monument, Trinidad, Las Vegas, NM, Albuquerque and then three Arizona cities before arriving in Las Vegas.
Surveillance videos from cameras in front of the Trump International Hotel show Livelsberger apparently driving by the valet part of the hotel before ultimately returning and blowing the truck up shortly after pulling in at around 8:40 a.m. New Year’s Day.
The connection between a Tesla vehicle championed by Elon Musk, who has become a key advisor to President-Elect Donald Trump, and the Trump-branded hotel immediately led to speculation about Livelsberger’s motive.
“It's not lost on us that it's in front of the Trump building, that it's a Tesla vehicle,” Evans said. “But we don't have information at this point that definitively tells us or suggests it was because of this particular ideology or any of the reasoning behind it. That's the purpose of the investigation that we're conducting, is to get to the bottom of exactly what happened.”
But at a press briefing Thursday, authorities said they are still pursuing scores of leads in the case and just don’t know why Livelsberger packed the truck’s bed with consumer-grade fireworks, propane and gasoline and then shot himself at about the same time those items detonated.
Federal experts said the explosives in the car and the materials designed to make them more powerful were not overly complex and didn’t require extraordinary skill to assemble. It was mostly propane, regular consumer-grade fireworks and camping fuel, among other run of the mill chemicals.
“The level of sophistication is not what we would expect from an individual with this type of military experience, and that most of the materials inside that Tesla were fuel to help fuel a greater explosion,” said Kenny Cooper, the assistant special agent in charge of the Bureau of Alcohol,Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives field office working the case. “But it's too early to answer any question as if there was sophisticated connectivity to those components to make it ignite in the way that it did.”
Officials have said that the Cybertruck itself was surprisingly intact after that kind of an explosion and that the detonation went more up through its roof than out, which likely saved lives.
Elon Musk wrote on X, “the evil knuckleheads picked the wrong vehicle for a terrorist attack. Cybertruck actually contained the explosion and directed the blast upwards.”
Livelsberger was on an approved leave from the 10th special forces group in Germany. He had a long and distinguished career in the U.S. Army. He was a Green Beret operations sergeant who spent most of his time at Fort Carson and Germany. He was also previously in the National Guard and the Army Reserve, according to the U.S. Army.
His awards for service include the Bronze Star Medal with Valor, the Meritorious Service Medal and the Army Commendation Medal with Valor, among others, according to the U.S. Army.
Officials said on Thursday he had no criminal background and legally purchased guns in Colorado on Dec. 30.
Public records show he had a long history of living in Colorado and had multiple properties in Colorado Springs, some of which appear to be rented.
He had been married, but appeared to be divorced. Records show he applied for another marriage license in 2022. It’s not clear whether that marriage took place.
Matthew Livelsberger was a 2005 graduate of Bucyrus High School in Ohio.
According to archives in his local hometown paper, The Telegraph-Forum, Livelsberger was on the school’s football and baseball teams. A few years after he graduated, a different local paper published an article lauding Livelsberger for his efforts with Afghan children during his tour overseas with the U.S. Army.
Livelsberger was quoted in the 2010 article, “Soldiers like myself want to do everything we can to affect our sphere of influence, and this definitely is one of them.”
According to the article, published in the News Journal Livelsberger started a donation drive for clothes and toys for children in Afghanistan.
Denverite's Kevin Beaty contributed to this report.
This is a developing story and may be updated.
