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The active-duty Green Beret who was driving a Tesla Cybertruck that blew up outside the Trump International Hotel Las Vegas on New Year’s Day “was a 100 percent patriot,” his bewildered uncle said Thursday.
Matthew Livelsberger, 37, was “like a Rambo-type, for lack of a better word,” his uncle Dean Livelsberger told The Independent.
Dean, whose older brother is Livelsberger’s father, Roger, himself an Air Force veteran who served in Vietnam, said his nephew “loved the Army.” “He used to have all patriotic stuff on Facebook, he was 100 percent loving the country,” he continued. “He loved Trump, and he was always a very, very patriotic soldier, a patriotic American. It’s one of the reasons he was in Special Forces for so many years. It wasn’t just one tour of duty.”
Livelsberger was in the U.S. Army for 19 years, 18 of which were in the elite Special Forces. He was currently stationed in Germany, and was on leave in Colorado Springs when he rented the Cybertruck and drove to Nevada, law enforcement sources said.
The truck blew up just a few hours after Shamsud-Din Jabbar rammed a truck into New Year’s Day revelers in New Orleans killing at least 15 people. Jabbar, 42, was also an Army veteran who was posted to the same base as Livelsberger, and also served in Afghanistan around the same time that Livelsberger did. Investigators were looking into a possible link between the two men, who both rented their vehicles through the same carshare service, Turo, but so far they have found no “direct” connection between the two.
At a press conference on Thursday afternoon, Las Vegas Sheriff Kevin McMahill said the coroner’s office found that Livelsberger “had sustained a gunshot wound to the head prior to the detonation of the vehicle.” And while the investigation is still ongoing, he believed Livelsberger’s actions indicated “a suicide with a bombing that occurred immediately thereafter,” rather than a “suicide mission.”
Livelsberger’s military ID and passport were found inside the Cybertruck, as well as a Desert Eagle .50 caliber semi-automatic pistol and an SLR Rifleworks B30. Both weapons, and Livelsberger himself, were burnt “almost beyond recognition,” according to McMahill. He said investigators also recovered a cache of fireworks, along with an iPhone, a smartwatch, and several credit cards in Livelsberger’s name.
Burned fireworks found inside Livelsberger’s Tesla were retrieved, as well an iPhone, a smartwatch, and several credit cards in his name, according to McMahill.
Special Agent in Charge Spencer Evans of the FBI’s Las Vegas Division said agents had tracked the vehicle from Denver, through Tesla charging stations in Arizona and New Mexico, before it arrived in Vegas at 7:29 a.m. on Wednesday.
Kenny Cooper, assistant special agent in charge of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms’ San Francisco Division, said it remains unclear how the explosives were detonated. He noted that everything used was consumer-grade, such as the camping fuel and propane tanks, in addition to “some explosive targets that can be purchased at any sporting goods store.” Both of the firearms in the Cybertruck had been legally purchased two days earlier, on December 30. Cooper also noted, echoing Dean Livelsberger, that “the level of sophistication is not what we would expect from an individual with this type of military experience.”