LAS VEGAS — Firework mortars and camp fuel canisters were found stuffed into the back of the Tesla Cybertruck that exploded outside President-elect Donald Trump’s Las Vegas hotel early Wednesday, killing a suspect inside the vehicle and sparking an intense investigation into possible terrorism.
Las Vegas Metropolitan Police and Clark County Fire Department officials said that a person died inside the futuristic-looking pickup truck and seven people nearby suffered minor injuries.
By late Wednesday afternoon, authorities were still working to get the body out of the vehicle and start processing the evidence inside. President Joe Biden was briefed on the explosion.
“Our number one goal is to ensure that we have the proper identification of the subject involved in this incident,” said Jeremy Schwartz, acting special agent in charge for the FBI’s Las Vegas office, “Following that, our second objective is to determine whether this was an act of terrorism or not.”
Police Department Sheriff Kevin McMahill said authorities know who rented the truck with the Turo app in Colorado, but are not releasing the name until investigators determine if it is the same person who died.
McMahill said video captured at Telsa charging stations provided by CEO Elon Musk helped authorities track the vehicle’s journey, arriving in Las Vegas about 7:30 AM. then driving about an hour later into the valet area of the Trump International Hotel, where it sat 15 to 20 seconds before the explosion occurred.
Video presented at an afternoon news conference showed a tumble of charred fireworks mortars, cannisters and other explosive devices crowded into the back of the pickup. The truck bed walls were still intact because the blast shot straight up rather than to the sides.
Musk said Wednesday afternoon on X that “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.”
In an earlier post on the platform Musk said that his entire senior term was investigating the explosion, adding, “We’ve never seen anything like this.”
Musk has recently become a member of Trump’s inner circle. Neither Trump nor Musk were in Las Vegas early Wednesday. Both had attended Trump’s New Year’s Eve party at Trump’s estate in South Florida.
Musk spent an estimated $250 million during the presidential campaign to support the former president. He was at Trump’s resort on election night and has been a frequent guest there. Trump has named Musk, the world’s richest man, to co-lead a new effort to find ways to cut the government’s size and spending.
“This is a Tesla truck, and we know that Elon Musk is working with President-elect Trump, and it’s the Trump Tower,” McMahill said when reporters asked about possible political connections. “So there’s obviously things to be concerned about and it’s something we continue to look at.”
The truck explosion came hours after a driver rammed a truck into a crowd in New Orleans’ famed French Quarter early on New Year’s Day, killing at least 15 people before being shot to death by police. That crash was being investigated as a terrorist attack and police believe the driver was not acting alone.
“We are absolutely investigating any connectivity to what happened in New Orleans as well as other attacks that have been occurring around the world,” McMahill said. “We aren’t ruling anything out.”
In a statement, Turo said it was working with authorities.
“We do not believe that either renter involved in the Las Vegas and New Orleans attacks had a criminal background that would have identified them as a security threat,” the statement said.
In Las Vegas, witness Ana Bruce, visiting from Brazil, 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,” Bruce said.
Her travel companion, Alcides Antunes, showed video he took of flames lapping the sides of the silver-colored vehicle.
The 64-story hotel is just off the Las Vegas Strip and across the street from the Fashion Show Las Vegas shopping mall.
Eric Trump, a son of the president-elect and executive vice president of the Trump Organization, posted about the fire on the social media platform X. He praised the fire department and local law enforcement “for their swift response and professionalism.”
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Associated Press writers Colleen Long and Zeke Miller in Washington and Michelle L. Price in New York contributed to this report. Snow reported from Phoenix.