One person was killed and seven injured when a Tesla truck caught fire and exploded outside US president-elect Donald Trump's Las Vegas hotel.
Fireworks and fuel canisters were found in the back of the Cybertruck, as investigators probed whether the blast was linked to Mr Trump or Tesla chief Elon Musk. Detectives know who rented the truck but are withholding the name until they are sure it is the same person who died inside the vehicle. Local media named the driver as US Army veteran Matthew Livelsberger, 37.
Seven people nearby received minor injuries and were taken to a hospital for treatment. The fire outside the 64-storey Trump International Hotel Las Vegas was reported at 8.40am on Wednesday, after the truck had driven up and down Las Vegas Boulevard for an hour before pulling into a valet area.
President Joe Biden said authorities were probing “any possible connection” with an attack that killed 15 people in New Orleans earlier on Wednesday, but had found nothing so far. FBI special agent Jeremy Schwartz said the agency's two main objectives were to identify the subject and “determine whether this was an act of terrorism or not”.
Early findings “suggest this was an isolated incident with no indication of a larger plan”, police said. But “it's a Tesla truck, and we know Elon Musk is working with president-elect Trump, and it's the Trump tower,” Las Vegas sheriff Kevin McMahill said. “So there's obviously things to be concerned about there and that's something we continue to look at.”
There did not appear to be any further threat to the community, Mr McMahill said. He said the back of the truck contained petrol, camping fuel canisters and “large firework mortars”, but the heavy truck had contained most of the blast and the hotel's glass doors were not even broken.
The truck was rented in Colorado using an app called Turo, detectives believe. They tracked its journey using video from Tesla charging stations, which showed it arriving in Las Vegas about 7.30am and driving into the valet area of the Trump hotel about an hour later. It sat there for 15 to 20 seconds before the explosion.
After the incident, Mr Musk said in a post on X: “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.”
“The whole Tesla senior team is investigating this matter right now,” he said in an earlier post on the platform, after attending a New Year's Eve party at Mr Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort. “We’ve never seen anything like this.”
Eric Trump, one of the president-elect's sons and executive vice president of the Trump Organisation, praised the fire department and local law enforcement “for their swift response and professionalism” in a post on X.
In Las Vegas, witness Ana Bruce said she heard three explosions. “The first one where we saw the fire, the second one, I guess, was the battery or something like that, and the third was the big one that smoked the entire area and was the moment when everyone was told to evacuate and stay away,” Ms Bruce, visiting from Brazil, said. Her travel companion, Alcides Antunes, showed video he took of flames lapping the sides of the silver-coloured vehicle.
The 64-storey hotel is just off the Las Vegas Strip and across the street from the Fashion Show Las Vegas shopping mall. The truck explosion came after a pick-up truck rammed a crowd in New Orleans’ French Quarter early on New Year’s Day, killing at least 15 people before the driver was shot dead by police.
The US National Transport Safety Board in 2024 opened an investigation into a crash and fire involving a Tesla electric semi-truck on a California highway. Motor experts say electric vehicle fires burn differently to those in cars with internal combustion engines, often lasting longer and being harder to extinguish.
