More information is coming to light about Matthew Livelsberger, the 37-year-old veteran and U.S. Army Green Beret who drove the Tesla Cybertruck which exploded on New Year’s Day outside of the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas.
Inside Edition posted footage to their YouTube channel on Friday of Livelsberger competing on the History Channel’s “Ultimate Soldier Challenge” alongside fellow soldier and ex-UFC fighter Tim Kennedy.
The show pits soldiers from various countries against one another in competition to see who is militarily superior.
Kennedy and Livelsberger won the show as the Special Forces team.
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Livelsberger went on the show as Matt Berg. Kennedy told Inside Edition it took him several hours after the events on New Year’s Day to make the connection.
“It took about twelve hours of me seeing some photos as more photos started coming out of, you know, who he was. And then I saw Matt Berg with a older photo of him, and I was like, ‘Oh no, dude I know that guy,’” he said.
Kennedy stated this realization “tore my heart out” as he viewed Livelsberger as “a really great Green Beret.”
Kennedy gave an incredibly positive recollection of his time around Livelsberger.
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“He was charming, he was talented, he was personable, he was kind, he was all the things that you’d expect from a Green Beret.”
On the explosion, Kennedy felt “it just categorically does not make sense” that the person behind the wheel could be the same one he met on the show.
“From everything that I have heard, he was universally valued by his team, by his peers,” he continued, calling the explosion “horrifically heartbreaking.”
Kennedy’s positive impression of Livelsberger gives a new and even stranger dimension to this story.
Livelsberger rented his Cybertruck from the Turo car-sharing app. Shamsud-Din Jabbar — the driver behind the wheel of a truck on Bourbon Street in New Orleans who killed 14 people on the same day — used Turo as well.
The day before the explosion, Livelsberger sent an email to retired U.S. Army intelligence officer Sam Shoemate in which he expressed concerns over an attack by China on the eastern seaboard of the United States and alluded to alleged war crimes in Afghanistan that he said were being covered up.
Livelsberger said veterans, servicemembers, and citizens generally needed to “wake up.”
He wrote that the country is “being led by weak and feckless leadership who only serve to enrich themselves.”
The Denver Post reported comments made by Spencer Evans of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Las Vegas division, who framed the explosion as “a tragic case of suicide involving a heavily decorated combat veteran who is struggling with PTSD and other issues.”
Federal officials say Livelsberger acted alone and has not been tied to any terrorist groups.
As we learn more, Kennedy’s impression of him makes the situation even more difficult to comprehend and adds a new layer of complexity to the story.
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