The man who died in a Cybertruck explosion in front of a Las Vegas hotel early Wednesday morning had a gunshot wound to the head.
Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Sheriff Kevin McMahill said the gunshot came “prior to the detonation of the vehicle” and that a handgun was found “at his feet inside the vehicle,” KLAS reported.
The driver of the truck has been identified as Matthew Livelsberger, 37. The sheriff said Livelsberger’s his passport, military identification, and credit cards found in the truck. A second gun was found in the vehicle, and both were purchased legally, the sheriff said.
Livelsberger was the only fatality in the explosion, which took place in front of the Trump International Hotel. Seven other people suffered minor injuries.
There is no definitive evidence that the Las Vegas explosion was connected with the truck attack in New Orleans just a few hours earlier that left 15 people dead and dozens injured. The driver of that truck, 42-year-old Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar, was killed in a shootout with police after the attack.
Both Jabbar and Livelsberger rented their trucks through the Turo app, which connects renters with private vehicle owners. Jabbar rented his Ford pickup truck in Texas, while Livelsberger rented the Cybertruck in Colorado on December 28 then took a meandering journey from Denver to Las Vegas through New Mexico and Arizona.
Jabbar, a US citizen born in Texas, was also an Army veteran, serving on active duty from 2007 to 2015 including a tour in Afghanistan and then in the Army Reserve until 2020. Livelsberger, a Green Beret, had served in the Army since 2006, deployed twice to Afghanistan and had other deployments to Ukraine, Tajikistan, Georgia, and Congo, the Army told the Associated Press. He had been awarded five Bronze Stars, a combat infantry badge, and an Army Commendation Medal.
He was on an approved leave at the time of the attack and had recently returned from an assignment in Germany.
McMahill said that both men served at Fort Bragg, now Fort Liberty, in North Carolina, although there is no indication they were at the post at the same time or that they served in the same unit, KLAS said.
“I also know that they served in Afghanistan in 2009,” the sheriff said. “We don’t have any evidence they were in the same province, the same location, or the same unit.”
An official told the AP that investigators believe Livelsberger may have gotten into a fight with his wife over relationship issues before he bought the guns and rented the truck.
Jabbar apparently made videos while driving from his home in Houston to New Orleans in which he explained that he’d originally planned to call his family friends together and kill them but decided to pledge allegiance to Islamic State and carry out a mass attack instead.
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[Featured image: Matthew Livelsberger/Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department and Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar/FBI]
