The explosion bore some general similarities to the vehicle attack in New Orleans earlier Wednesday, as both involved a symbolic target on New Year’s Day, a truck rented through the website Turo and a suspect with a military background. Authorities said they are investigating possible links between the two attacks but repeatedly called the Vegas explosion an “isolated incident.” “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 said Thursday. The FBI in Denver, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and the Colorado Springs Police Department are conducting “law enforcement activity” at a home in Colorado Springs related to the explosion, the FBI said. How the incident unfolded The Cybertruck was rented on December 28 in Denver and made stops at several Tesla charging stations in Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada, before entering Las Vegas in the early morning of New Year’s Day, McMahill said. The truck was first spotted in the city at 7:29 a.m., drove up and down Las Vegas Boulevard and later arrived at the Trump Hotel, packed with fireworks, gas tanks and fuel. A CCTV video shown by the police captured the moment the driver ignited the explosion. In related social media footage, the vehicle is engulfed in smoke while being doused with water. During a news conference, police shared footage revealing scorched gasoline containers and firework mortars found among the wreckage. Authorities are still working on accessing the footage from the cameras inside the Cybertruck, which likely captured video during the incident, McMahill said. The remains of a Tesla Cybertruck that was detonated by its driver at the entrance of Trump Tower are inspected in Las Vegas, Nevada, on January 1, 2025. Ronda Churchill/Reuters Guests who were staying at Trump International Hotel at the time of the explosion said the windows shook, even more than 40 floors up. The guests, who did not want to be publicly identified, said they saw smoke billowing in the stairwells and coming out of the elevator doors. Elevator service was shut down, and they had to stay on their floor. On Thursday, damage from the explosion was visible in the Trump hotel’s valet area. Parts of the ceiling had smoke damage, and the gold awning had a hole several feet wide. The FBI in Denver, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and the Colorado Springs Police Department were conducting “law enforcement activity” Thursday at a home in Colorado Springs related to the explosion, the FBI said. What we know about the driver A family member and former Army colleague described Livelsberger as a highly decorated combat veteran whose background in special forces and explosives seemed at odds with an impotent attack that relied, in part, on fireworks. And, they said, Livelsberger had a strong love of country – particularly the president-elect. “When President Trump was in office (Livelsberger) would comment on his Facebook page about the things President Trump had said or done or how he’s helping the military,” the relative, who asked not to be named, told CNN. “Matt had a lot of respect for Mr. Trump – he just loved the guy.” Livelsberger was not affiliated with a political party, according to the Colorado Secretary of State voter registration database. A fellow member of the Green Berets who served with Livelsberger in Afghanistan said a key focus of their mission was to dismantle a network of Taliban-aligned forces that had been detonating car bombs in and around Kabul in an effort to destabilize the government. Livelsberger became a father in April last year, his former colleague said. The military colleague said he was shocked by the incident in Las Vegas, especially given Livelsberger’s impressive credentials: a Green Beret with a background in communications, IT and tactical unmanned aerial vehicles. The fellow soldier, who had kept in touch with Livelsberger since their deployment, said he didn’t know whether the explosion of the Cybertruck was in any way inspired by the kind of attacks that were so common a feature of the unit’s mission. Some similarities to New Orleans attack The explosion closely followed a deadly attack in New Orleans, where a driver with a US military background crashed a rented pickup truck into a crowd celebrating New Year’s on Bourbon Street early Wednesday morning, killing 14 people. The man, who was killed in a firefight with police after the attack, was identified as an Army veteran from Texas and had an ISIS flag in his vehicle. He said in videos made before the attack that he had joined the terror group, authorities said. Turo, which operates an online platform for car owners to lease their vehicles, reported that its service was used to rent vehicles involved in the tragic events in New Orleans and Las Vegas and it is cooperating with the authorities. “We do not believe that either renter involved in the Las Vegas and New Orleans attacks had a criminal background that would have identified them as a security threat,” a Turo spokesperson told CNN. Both men were stationed in North Carolina’s Fort Liberty, previously known as Fort Bragg, but there is no record they served in the same unit or during the same years, McMahill said Thursday. The men also served in Afghanistan in 2009 but McMahill said there were not in the same province or in the same unit. “If these turn out to be simply similarities, very strange similarities to have, and so we’re not prepared to rule in or rule out anything at this point,” McMahill said. “We haven’t even gotten into the phones or the computers which are usually very, very instructive and informative to us as we investigate.” The FBI has located phones and laptops, and residences are being searched in relation to both the Las Vegas and New Orleans incidents, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. There’s no evidence that anyone else was involved in orchestrating the Cybertruck incident, Mayorkas said. Video Ad Feedback