, staff editor at Intelligencer Investigators photograph a Tesla Cybertruck that exploded outside the lobby of the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas on the morning of New Year’s Day. Photo: Wade Vandervort/AFP via Getty Images On the morning of New Year’s Day in Las Vegas, a Tesla Cybertruck blew up while parked in front of the Trump International Hotel. Police say the truck’s bed was loaded with gas canisters and fireworks, and that the driver died and seven people were injured. Writings from the driver, a 37-year-old Green Beret who died by suicide before the explosion, appears to point to a political motive for the blast. Below are some quick answers to big questions about the Vegas incident thus far. What happened? — Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) January 2, 2025 NBC News spoke to Alicia Arritt, an ex-girlfriend of Livelsberger, who said he contended with a number of physical issues stemming from his military service, including back surgeries from his days serving as a paratrooper. She said he also dealt with headaches and memory loss from a brain injury. “We talked about it a little bit, but I think he was ashamed of it,” she told the outlet. “Ashamed of the memory loss and head injuries. He couldn’t seek treatment for it while he was still active duty. He was worried that if he did, then that would impact his career.” . Was it an attack? Authorities investigated the explosion as a possible terrorist attack, given that it took place outside Donald Trump’s branded hotel in a major American city on a prominent holiday with a high-profile vehicle. But Livelsberger indicated a different motivation in a letter excerpt shared with the media by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. “This was not a terrorist attack, it was a wake up call. Americans only pay attention to spectacles and violence. What better way to get my point across than a stunt with fireworks and explosives,” he wrote, per the Associated Press. What that point was later became clearer. In a series of writings found on Livelsberger’s iPhone, he expressed support support for both Trump and Cybertruck creator Elon Musk and denounced the nation’s current leadership as “weak and feckless.” Livelsberger urged his fellow military servicemembers to move on the nation’s capital and take over federal buildings and roads and hold them until “the purge is complete.” “Try peaceful means first, but be prepared to fight to get the Dems out of the fed government and military by any means necessary. They all must go and a hard reset must occur for our country to avoid collapse,” he wrote, according to the Nevada Current. . Is there any connection to the New Orleans attack? Initially, it seemed there might be a connection between the Vegas Cybertruck explosion and the Bourbon Street truck-ramming attack, which also happened on New Year’s Day. The fully electric trucks used in both incidents were rented via the niche car-sharing platform Turo, and both suspects had U.S. military backgrounds, with both spending time in Afghanistan and at Fort Bragg. But on Thursday, the FBI said that the suspect in the Bourbon Street attack, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, acted alone, and that there is “no definitive link” between his alleged actions and the explosion in Las Vegas. . Did the explosion have anything to do with the Cybertruck itself? How have Tesla and Elon Musk responded? As videos of the fire-engulfed Cybertruck spread across the internet, Musk said that company executives were looking into the explosion, while insisting the company had never seen something like that happen before. Hours later, Musk announced on X that company data indicated there was nothing wrong with the vehicle, and that the explosion resulted from combustible materials in the bed of the truck: We have now confirmed that the explosion was caused by very large fireworks and/or a bomb carried in the bed of the rented Cybertruck and is unrelated to the vehicle itself. All vehicle telemetry was positive at the time of the explosion. https://t.co/HRjb87YbaJ