The driver of a Tesla cybertruck that exploded outside the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas on Wednesday was a big fan of the president-elect, his uncle told The Independent.
The driver has been identified as Matthew Alan Livelsberger, 37, an active-duty US Army Green Beret. Las Vegas Sheriff Kevin McMahill said at a news conference on Thursday that the driver shot himself in the head prior to the blast that injured seven people outside the Trump hotel.
Livelsberger’s uncle, Dean LiveIsberger, told The Independent Thursday afternoon that his late nephew “was a 100 percent patriot” and a big Trump supporter.
Livelsberger was “like a Rambo-type, for lack of a better word,” Dean said.
“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.”
LiveIsberger rented the Cybertruck in his hometown of Colorado Springs on Dec. 28 and made several stops at Tesla charging stations as he drove to Trump’s Las Vegas property.
Police say LiveIsberger arrived outside the Trump hotel with a combination of fireworks, gas tanks and camping fuel in the bed of the vehicle where he detonated it using a device he controlled.
Dean LiveIsberger said the amateur nature of the explosives is raising some questions.
“Matt was a very skilled warrior, and he would be able to make — if it was him, and if he did this — he would’ve been able to make a more sophisticated explosive than using propane tanks and camping fuel,” he said. “He was what you might call a ‘supersoldier.’ If you ever read about the things he was awarded, and the experience he had, some of it doesn’t make sense, when he had the skills and ability to make something more, let’s say, ‘efficient.’ His skills were enormous from what he had been taught in the military.”
Dean LiveIsberger suggested that his nephew “could have fashioned a bomb that would have obliterated half of that hotel if he seriously wanted to hurt others.”
“Think of Oklahoma City… [Timothy McVeigh] was just a normal soldier,” he added. “Not a Tier 1 operator like Matt.”
