On January 1, 2025, at approximately 8:39 a.m. (PST), the contents of a Tesla Cybertruck exploded outside the main entrance of the Trump International Hotel Las Vegas in Paradise, Nevada, United States. The vehicle's sole occupant died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head immediately prior to the explosion and seven bystanders were injured by the blast. Authorities found that the vehicle contained firework mortars and gas canisters, which fueled the explosion and fire.
Authorities identified the driver and alleged perpetrator as Matthew Alan Livelsberger, an American-born, active-duty United States Army Special Forces soldier from Colorado Springs, Colorado, who was on leave from overseas duty.
Livelsberger wrote two letters, recovered by the FBI from his burnt phone, in which he denied being a terrorist but admitted using explosives to convey a political message and ease his mental burdens. On December 31, 2024, Livelsberger also sent an email manifesto to Samuel Shoemate, a retired Army intelligence officer, claiming he was under surveillance by U.S. intelligence agencies due to his knowledge of advanced military technologies and covert operations, including an alleged cover-up of war crimes resulting from U.S. airstrikes on drug facilities in May 2019 in Nimruz Province, Afghanistan. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) had investigated the airstrikes and concluded that they were not lawful targets. U.S. Forces in Afghanistan rebutted that the Taliban-controlled drug facility was targeted under domestic rules allowing strikes on facilities generating revenue for enemy combatants and that precautions to avoid civilian casualties were taken. The manifesto narrative, which detailed plans to escape across the Mexico border amid fears of being stopped by intelligence agents, showed no suicidal intent and conflicts with the two digital letters apparently authored earlier that month, which focus on a personal mental health crisis rather than the whistleblowing and clandestine operations outlined in the manifesto.
The truck explosion was one of two vehicular attacks that occurred in the United States on the first day of 2025, the other being the New Orleans truck attack just hours earlier. Authorities consider the two unrelated.