AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Federal officials are still trying to figure out the motive behind a Colorado man's decision to drive a rented Tesla Cybertruck to Las Vegas and detonate it in front of a Trump Hotel on New Year's Day. Allison Sherry from Colorado Public Radio has been reporting on the man identified as Matthew Livelsberger. She joins us now. Hi, Allison.
ALLISON SHERRY, BYLINE: Hi.
CHANG: OK, so where does the investigation stand now?
SHERRY: Well, at the moment, federal officials and the Las Vegas Police Department are trying to figure out why this happened. And this mostly starts with tracking down as much information as they can about Matthew Livelsberger. They've been going through devices, his residences, his phones, his computers, what he purchased, that sort of thing. And in today's news briefing that just ended a bit ago, officials say he acted alone, that he left messages in his phone and in electronic notes about the state of his mental health that day and what was going on in his life. Officials say he didn't seem to have a lot of animosity towards the president-elect, but he had a personal - he had some personal and policy frustrations about the world that he wrote about.
CHANG: OK. Well, just recap for us what happened on New Year's Day in Las Vegas.
SHERRY: Yeah. Livelsberger picked up a Tesla Cybertruck in Denver, where he was staying at a hotel through that rental app Turo. He took a pretty circuitous route to get to Vegas, kind of a more scenic route, to be honest, stopping at various places in New Mexico and Arizona. He did at least one drive-by of the Trump International Hotel before going back. He had explosives, camping fuel, fireworks and multiple firearms in the trunk of the Cybertruck. Authorities say he pulled into the valet at about 8:40 a.m. on New Year's Day morning, put a gun to his mouth and shot himself and then immediately detonated the car. He injured seven bystanders.
CHANG: And I understand that you have looked into his life a bit. What do you know about him?
SHERRY: Yeah. We know Livelsberger had reached the rarified air of master sergeant in the U.S. Army. He'd received at least a dozen awards, including a bronze medal for valor after serving in Afghanistan. He was deployed five times on combat missions, though he had not been deployed for the past 12 months, according to the U.S. Army. He was 37 years old. He was born in Ohio but had lived in Colorado Springs on and off for more than a decade. We found properties he owned and rented out. He'd been married but was divorced. There was some reporting he had a new partner and a baby, but we haven't confirmed that yet. He'd been based in Germany but was on an approved leave and back in Colorado.
CHANG: OK. And I know that motive is still unclear, but what do we know, if anything, so far on that front?
SHERRY: Yeah. I mean, it's a strange story. It seems like with the Tesla truck, the Trump Hotel, that Livelsberger was trying to make a statement. And officials say just this afternoon that he wrote in a notes file in his phone that he wanted to make a, quote, "spectacle" because that's what gets America's attention. And he said in that same notes file that America needed to, quote, "wake up. We are being led by feckless leaders. We are terminally ill and headed towards collapse," end quote.
So it seems like he also had some personal problems in his life, some professional challenges, although we didn't get a lot of detail on that today. But if he was trying to send a message, it's unclear what he was exactly trying to say. Again, officials say there's no evidence that he didn't like the president-elect. Apparently, Mr. Livelsberger was having some mental health issues, he'd suffered from some PTSD and that this was just a tragic case of suicide. So there are a lot of questions still ahead in this investigation.
CHANG: Indeed. That is Allison Sherry from Colorado Public Radio. Thank you so much, Allison.
SHERRY: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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