The exposition of a Tesla Cybertruck outside a Trump property in Las Vegas on New Year’s Day is now believed to be the result of suicide by an Army service member who had been struggling with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), according to the FBI.
Federal and local police identified Matthew Alan Livelsberger, an active-duty member of the Army Special Forces, as the perpetrator of an explosion outside the Trump International Hotel early Wednesday.
Livelsberger, 37, fatally shot himself in the head shortly before the vehicle exploded while parked in the hotel’s valet area, according to the county coroner.
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The FBI’s special agent in charge of the Las Vegas bureau, Spencer Evans, said during a press conference Friday that the bureau had obtained DNA from one of Livelsberger’s family members and was able to confirm his identity.
Livelsberger was believed to have had PTSD and been dealing with family issues and personal grievances, which contributed to his decision to rent the Cybertruck from Turo rental company in Colorado and drive it out to Las Vegas, where he had planned to detonate the vehicle, according to Evans.
“It’s evident that the subject considered, planned and thoughtfully prepared for this act alone — that’s what we believe, and we have no information to the contrary at this point,” Evans said.
Initially, federal police were unsure if the vehicle explosion was connected to the terrorist attack in New Orleans, in which an Army veteran rented a vehicle also from the Turo company and drove it into a crowd on Bourbon Street around the same time Wednesday. Fifteen people and countless others were injured in that attack.
Livelsberger had no connection toward the New Orleans incident or animosity directed at President-elect Donald Trump, according to interviews with friends and family members who spoke with authorities.
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“The only things that we have connecting them are incidental, what we believe to be coincidental, similarities,” Evans said.
“We have identified no telephonic or email communication between the subjects, no information that suggests that they knew each other, that they ever served in the same unit, that they were ever assigned at the same place at the same time and had interaction,” Evans added.
