The driver of a Tesla Cybertruck was killed and seven others were injured when it exploded in flames outside the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas on Wednesday. According to officials, the FBI was looking into whether the explosion was a terrorist act.
The car exploded, and flames poured out of it as it sat just outside the hotel, according to footage captured by witnesses both inside and outside the establishment.
The incident happened hours after a man killed 15 people in New Orleans on New Year’s Day when he crashed a truck into a crowd of revellers.
President-elect Donald Trump’s business, the Trump Organisation, owns the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas. Trump will return to the White House on January 20. Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, advised the incoming president and was a major supporter of Trump during his 2024 campaign.
During a press conference in the afternoon, Sheriff Kevin McMahill of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department commented, “Obviously, there are lots of questions that we have to answer.”
Later, FBI special agent in charge Jeremy Schwartz told reporters that it was still unclear if the explosion was a terrorist attack.
“I’m aware that everyone is curious about that word and is attempting to determine whether we can declare, ‘Hey, this is a terrorist attack.'” “That is our objective, and that is what we are attempting to accomplish,” Schwartz stated.
He went on to say that, although the FBI had identified the driver of the car that had been rented in Colorado, they were not yet prepared to make the driver’s identity public.
Musk claimed that the Cybertruck had nothing to do with the explosion.
“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,” Musk wrote in a post to X. “All vehicle telemetry was positive at the time of the explosion.”
Telemetry is the process of automatically gathering data from distant sources and sending it back to a central location for analysis at a later time.
According to McMahill, the explosion caused minor injuries to seven people, while the 2024 model-year Cybertruck revealed one dead person inside. He added that Turo, a car-sharing service, had rented both the Cybertruck and the vehicle used in the New Orleans attack.
The Cybertruck arrived at the Trump building at 8:40 a.m. local time (1640 GMT), according to McMahill. Police were aware of the attack in New Orleans earlier Wednesday, he said. A possible explosive device was discovered in the car used in the attack in New Orleans, according to the FBI.
Las Vegas firefighters arrived and extinguished the vehicle fire four minutes after the report. They transported two of the injured to hospitals due to their minor injuries. Following the incident, the Trump Hotel was evacuated, and the majority of the guests were relocated to another hotel.
Eric Trump, the son of President-elect Trump and executive vice president of the Trump Organisation, discussed the incident on X. His post stated, “Earlier today, a reported electric vehicle fire occurred in the porte cochère of Trump Las Vegas,” which is the covered entrance area of the building.
