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The man who detonated explosives inside a Tesla Cybertruck in front of the Trump Las Vegas hotel shot himself in the head before the fiery incident, authorities said.

In a strange twist to an already bizarre story, Matthew Livelsberger who was a member of the U.S. Army’s elite Special Forces, was found inside the vehicle with a “self-inflicted gunshot wound” Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Sheriff Kevin McMahill said on Thursday.

Among the items found after the explosion were a .50-caliber Desert Eagle pistol along with other weapons. It is unclear whether that was the gun used for the fatal shot. Livelsberger’s Military ID and passport were also found in the vehicle as well as his smartwatch and phone.

The soldier’s body was burned beyond recognition and authorities are unsure of the motive.

There is speculation about whether the incident was motivated by politics considering the relationship between the hotel’s owner, President-elect Donald J. Trump, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who has been tapped to head up the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an agency that will be tasked with eliminating government waste.

“It’s not lost on us that it happened in front of the Trump building and a Tesla vehicle was used,” said FBI special agent in charge Spencer Evans.

According to his family, the 37-year-old Livelsberger was a big Trump supporter, “like a Rambo-type, for lack of a better word,” uncle Dean Livelsberger told The Independent.

“He used to have all patriotic stuff on Facebook, he was 100 percent loving the country,” Livelsberger 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.”

He also had questions about the amateurish bomb, stating that given his nephew’s military training, he could have put together a much more potent explosive.

“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 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 Livelsberger told the outlet.

Livelsberger suggested that if he wanted, 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,” he added. “McVeigh was just a normal soldier. Not a Tier 1 operator like Matt.”

Chris Donaldson
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