A Tesla Cybertruck that exploded in front of Trump International Hotel Las Vegas, killing one person and injuring seven others, contained gasoline and camp fuel containers, as well as large firework mortars, according to authorities.
Las Vegas Sheriff Kevin McMahill said during a press conference on Wednesday that investigators know who rented the Cybertruck, which was acquired in Colorado, though they are not prepared to identify that person without 100% certainty.
McMahill also said investigators were able to trace the truck through Tesla charging stations. License plate readers in Las Vegas first detected the vehicle at about 7:30 a.m., and McMahill said it traveled up and down Las Vegas Boulevard before pulling into the Trump hotel valet area.
Within 15-20 seconds of pulling up to the hotel, the sheriff added, the vehicle exploded.
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During the press conference, the sheriff showed a video of the truck bed, which showed it was filled with gasoline canisters, camp fuel canisters and large firework mortars.
But the sheriff also pointed to the exterior of the truck and how it was still completely intact after the explosion.
“The fact that this was a Cybertruck, really limited the damage that occurred inside of the valet because it had most of the blast go up through the truck and out,” McMahill said. “In fact, if you look on that video, you’ll see that the front glass doors at the Trump hotel were not even broken by the blast.”
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While the blast did not damage the glass doors, seven individuals sustained minor injuries and were taken to a nearby hospital.
As for all the guests at the hotel, they were taken in by another hotel as the investigation into the explosion continues.
Like McMahill, Jeremy Schwartz, the FBI acting special agent in charge in Las Vegas, would not identify the person inside the vehicle, saying, “Our number one goal is to ensure that we have proper identification of the subject involved in the incident.”
The second objective, Schwartz said, was to determine whether the explosion was an act of terrorism, which is being investigated by a joint terrorism task force.
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The special agent said the task force is made up of law enforcement officials from the area.
“We’re not doing anything along, and we wouldn’t do anything alone without our partners making sure that we’re all in lockstep,” Schwartz said. “We’ve learned from mistakes in the past, and we’re not going to do that again.”
The Cybertruck explosion was the second suspicious deadly incident in a major city since the start of 2025.
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Early Wednesday morning, a man later identified as Shamsud Din Jabbar, drove a pickup truck into a crowd on the famed Bourbon Street in New Orleans, killing over a dozen people, and injuring dozens more.
The truck Din Jabbar drove was rented from the peer-to-peer car rental company Turo, as was the Cybertruck that burst into flames in Las Vegas. Din Jabbar’s rented vehicle also donned an ISIS flag on its trailer hitch.
Schwartz said the FBI believes the explosion in Las Vegas was an isolated incident.
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“We do not believe that there’s a bunch of folks out there supporting this or helping this, and we don’t believe that there’s any other danger to the community right now,” he said, reassuring the community that over the next few hours and days, they will do what they can to get to the bottom of the incident.
McMahill said he did not know whether the two were connected but would not rule it out. He also said the Cybertruck did not have an ISIS flag like the truck in New Orleans, but every aspect is being investigated.
The preliminary investigation to this point involved input from Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who McMahill said gave quite a bit of information about how the vehicle was locked after it exploded because of the force from the explosion.
Musk also helped when it came to capturing surveillance footage from Tesla charging stations across the country.
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The billionaire kept followers up to date about the Cybertruck explosion on his social media platform X.
“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,” Musk wrote in one post.
“The evil knuckleheads picked the wrong vehicle for a terrorist attack. Cybertruck actually contained the explosion and directed the blast upwards,” he said in another post. “Not even the glass doors of the lobby were broken.”
President Biden also weighed in on the Las Vegas explosion.
“We’re tracking the explosion of a Cybertruck outside the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas,” he said while speaking about the fatal crash in New Orleans. “Law enforcement and the intelligence community are investigating this as well, including whether there’s any possible connection with the attack in New Orleans. Thus far, there’s nothing to report on that score at this time.”
