7mo ago

Matthew Livelsberger named as Cybertruck explosion suspect, reports say

www.independent.co.uk

Summary

Matthew Livelsberger, a 37-year-old Army veteran from Colorado Springs, has been identified as the driver of the Tesla Cybertruck that exploded outside Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas on New Year’s Day.

Livelsberger died in the blast, which injured seven people with minor injuries.

Authorities are investigating the explosion as a potential act of terror, noting Livelsberger's military connection to Shamsud Din Jabbar, the suspect in the deadly New Orleans attack hours earlier.

Firework mortars and fuel canisters were found in the truck, with no confirmed motive yet.

33 comments

Musk took the opportunity to praise Tesla’s Cybertruck for being so sturdy that he said it helped contain the blast.
“The evil knuckleheads picked the wrong vehicle for a terrorist attack. Cybertruck actually contained the explosion and directed the blast upwards,” he wrote in a post on X.
So, they're bad for carbombs, because the body traps the explosion and the weak point is the roof.
This also makes them very very bad for anyone inside if there's any type of accident.
- Not a great time for a marketing spiel, genius. Btw, even if you were right, everyone is still making fun of you because of the connection.
- So, shitty truck sorta manages an even shittier car bomb.
  Weird flex, but thanks for the distillation, Musk.
  
  The car bomb seems to have been assembled by throwing a bunch of sorta-burny-stuff in the back and thinking "that'll probably do." This may be the most incompetent "terrorist" we've heard about in a while.
  Has anything been said about the guy's motives? The choice of vehicle and target suggest this may not be another MAGA attack.
  EDIT: Turns out the guy was a Trump fan after all, so this doesn't really break the pattern of right-wing political violence:
  https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/cybertruck-explosion-suspect-matthew-livelsberger-vegas-b2672940.html?
  “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...."
  People are so confused to think that love of country and love of Trump naturally go together.
- No, it doesn't, cars don't usually explode from internal sources that would ricochet off the walls.
  Occupants usually die from external things crumpling / penetrating the shell, or just from the internal forces of coming to a stop too fast.
  I hate Musk as much as the next person but this an absurd reach. Not every possible factor of everything he's ever touched has to be bad in every way.
  
  No, it doesn’t, cars don’t usually explode from internal sources that would ricochet off the walls
  Where do you think the battery is located?
  If a cyber truck catches fire or explodes, it's built like an oven and contains the forces whether thats an explosion or heat from a fire.
  When you couple with issues exiting the vehicle in an emergency it's a valid safety concern.
- The parts that failed were:
  The "armoured glass" (remember the steel ball demo?) between the cargo area and the cabin
  The other windows, so everything vented though the cabin
  The tonneau cover over the cargo area
  So don't carry armed explosives and pyrotechnics in a closed cybertruck
  I wonder if both soldiers expected their hired electric trucks to suffer battery fires with the way they treated them. If they did they were disappointed
why do they need a suspect? cybertrucks just kinda do that
- Up until this article I legitimately assumed that's what was happening in the image. I don't understand what message the suspect was trying to send, but the investigators seem confident it was intentional, I guess.
  
  Another article says the body had an apparent self-inflicted gunshot to the head, which resolved any doubt I had.
If the man inside was truly trying to cause physical damage, why not drive it through the doors and into the lobby before detonating? The image of a burning truck in front of a Trump hotel is perfect, but that kind of damage doesn't do anything against specimens like Trump or Musk who don't just seem to thrive IN SPITE OF bad press, but thrive BECAUSE of bad press. If they were connected, Bourbon Street guy definitely was the more effective "terrorist".
- I think he thought he had a fuel/air bomb. They just need a blast to atomise the fuel and then another to detonate the fuel and air mix, fireworks might have been enough for both, with the launch charge doing the first step and the star burst doing the second
  A fuel air blast would have seriously damaged the building
Don't worry it's a white bro. Definitely not terrorism. \s
- Luigi is white. Didn't stop prosecutors there. Or is Italian not white enough anymore, suddenly?
  
  Don't know how much you are joking, but Italians were not considered "white" until fairly recently. I had an instructor (who I thought was an old sexist racist pos) who started telling a story about going to a hunt camp where he was the only white guy. I perked up, like "wait, what? Have I misread this 80 year old German man? Am I just blind?"
  Then as he carried on in the story. "Yeah they were all a bunch of drunk Italians, but some of them were ok!"
  ....
  
  Everyone knows Italians are criminals! Didn't you watch the Sopranos??
  
  It's only terrorism if it's done by brown people or directly affects rich people.
  
  Race war? 🤔
  Class war. 😎
  
  not white enough ~~anymore~~ again
What do they mean links has anyone explained that or is anyone retired from the army a terrorist suspect now?
Edit reread it, same mitary base.
- They were both at Fort Bragg, now re-branded as "Fort Liberty".
  Has anyone checked the water supply in our military bases?
  Fort Bragg Mass shooter:
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Kreutzer_Jr.
  Fort Hood Mass shooter #1:
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Fort_Hood_shooting
  Fort Hood Mass shooter #2:
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Fort_Hood_shootings
  
  I don't think it's the water supply, more likely that being part of an organisation that trains you to take lives devalues said lives for you. Also, military training is effectively inflicting trauma on you, and forcing you to adopt doing disciplined soldier stuff as a coping strategy. You know, the whole break down and build it back up thing.
- Also they served in Afghanistan at the same time
  There's every chance they knew each other, the a good chance it wasn't widely known that they knew each other
  FBI want us to believe the two soldiers each individually decided to hire an electric truck and use it to try and kill people and do damage
  Awfully coincidental

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