The person who died when a Tesla Cybertruck packed with explosives burst into flames outside the hotel in Las Vegas part-owned by Donald Trump was a highly decorated US army Green Beret who was deployed twice to Afghanistan, officials have said.
The driver and lone occupant of the electric-powered Tesla Cybertruck that caught fire and exploded has been identified as Matthew Livelsberger, from Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Livelsberger, 37, died, while seven bystanders were wounded. Livelsberger was first identified in media reports. On Thursday afternoon the FBI said it believed the suspect was Livelsberger – his military ID was found in the vehicle, and officials said tattoos gave a strong indication the body was his – and was waiting for DNA tests to confirm this.
Investigators discovered the vehicle was packed with fireworks-style mortars, camping fuel and gas canisters.
Clark county sheriff Kevin McMahill said investigators had found that Livelsberger had two legally owned firearms with him, and is believed to have shot himself before detonation. The body was burned beyond recognition, officials added.
The explosion caused minor injuries to seven people but virtually no damage to the Tump hotel. McMahill said Livelsberger likely planned a more damaging attack but the steel-sided vehicle absorbed much of the force from the crudely built explosive.
Damage from the blast was mostly limited to the interior of the truck because the explosion “vented out and up” and did not hit the hotel doors just a few feet away, the sheriff said.
“The level of sophistication is not what we would expect from an individual with this type of military experience,” said Kenny Cooper, a special agent in charge for the the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
The explosion occurred early on Wednesday morning, just hours after a mass killing in New Orleans in which a military veteran rammed a truck into a crowd.
Law-enforcement sources confirmed to local news outlets that the electric vehicle was rented from Turo, the vehicle-sharing service that was also used to rent the truck in the New Orleans attack.
That prompted a day of questions, including from Joe Biden, Tesla owner Elon Musk and investigators about possible connections between the two incidents, including reports from news station Denver 7 that Livelsberger and the suspect in the New Orleans attack had served at the same army base at one point.
An unnamed official told AP that both had spent time at the sprawling North Carolina base of Fort Liberty, formerly known as Fort Bragg, which is home to army special forces command. However, the official added that their time there did not overlap.
“At this point there is no definitive link between the attack here in New Orleans and the one in Las Vegas,” FBI deputy assistant director Christopher Raia told a news conference on Thursday.
The US army said Livelsberger was an active-duty soldier from 2006 to 2011,