One person was killed and seven others injured after a Cybertruck burst into flames Wednesday morning just outside the glass entrance doors of Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas, with police and FBI officials saying the type of vehicle and location of the fire raise many questions.
The incident occurred just hours after a driver in New Orleans killed 15 people and injured dozens more after he rammed his pickup truck into a crowd celebrating New Year’s. The FBI is investigating at least one suspected improvised explosive device found at the scene of what is being called an act of terrorism.
“As you can imagine, with an explosion here on an iconic Las Vegas boulevard, we are taking all of the precautions that we need to take to keep our community safe,” said Sheriff Kevin McMahill of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. “We’re looking for secondary devices. We’re taking it slow and we are going to make sure that we remain safe in our community.”
McMahill said there does not appear to be any further threat from the explosion, which left the unidentified driver of the vehicle dead and seven people with minor injuries. He urged the community to stay away from the area.
McMahill said they are investigating a number of leads, but could not immediately release any additional information about the incident, which was reported at 8:40 a.m. Wednesday.
“But obviously a Cybertruck … the Trump hotel — there’s lots of questions that we have to answer as we move forward with that,” he said.
Cybertrucks are made by Elon Musk’s company, Tesla. Musk is part of President-elect Donald Trump’s inner circle. That has prompted concerns on social media that it was a politically motivated attack.
Jeremy Schwartz, acting FBI special agent in charge of the Las Vegas office, said there remain many unanswered questions but that they have deployed additional resources to “figure out exactly what happened.”
McMahill said the 2024 Cybertruck pulled up to the front of the hotel “right up to the glass entrance doors of the hotel.”
“We saw that smoke starts showing from the vehicle, and then a large explosion from the truck occurs,” McMahill said.
A video posted on X by a person who said they were near the front of the hotel during the explosion shows a fully engulfed silver Cybertruck with what sound like fireworks exploding.
Eric Trump, one of the president-elect‘s sons, thanked first responders for their “swift response and professionalism.”
“The safety and well-being of our guests and staff remain our top priority,” he wrote on X.
Musk, who owns X, wrote on the social media platform that “the whole Tesla senior team is investigating this matter right now.”
“We’ve never seen anything like this,” he added.
