On Wednesday, a Tesla Cybertruck carrying fireworks caught fire and exploded outside President-elect Donald Trump’s Las Vegas hotel. Authorities said the explosion claimed one life and injured seven others. In a press conference, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police and Clark County Fire Department officials confirmed that a person died inside the futuristic-looking pickup truck, and they were working to retrieve the body. Seven people nearby suffered minor injuries, and several were taken to a hospital.
The fire in the valet area of the Trump International Hotel Las Vegas was reported at 8:40 a.m., a county spokesperson said in a statement. According to a law enforcement official, the truck was rented via the Turo app and appeared to be carrying a load of fireworks. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk said on X that “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.” “The whole Tesla senior team is investigating this matter right now,” Musk said in an earlier post on the platform after attending a New Year ’s Eve party at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.
He also suggested a connection between the explosion of the Cybertruck and a similar attack in New Orleans, as both vehicles were rented from the same car rental site, Turo. Musk wrote on X, “Appears likely to be an act of terrorism. Both this Cybertruck and the F-150 suicide bomb in New Orleans were rented from Turo. Perhaps they are linked in some way”.
US President Joe Biden was briefed on the explosion. The truck explosion came hours following a driver rammed a truck into a crowd in New Orleans’ famed French Quarter early on New Year’s Day, killing at least 15 people before being shot to death by police. That crash is being investigated as a terrorist attack, and police believe the driver was not acting alone. In Las Vegas, witness Ana Bruce, visiting from Brazil, said she heard three explosions.
“The first one, where we saw the fire; the second one, I guess, was the battery or something like that; and the third was the big one that smoked the entire area and was the moment when everyone was told to evacuate and stay away,” Bruce said. Her travel companion, Alcides Antunes, showed video he took of flames lapping the sides of the silver-colored vehicle.
The 64-story hotel is just off the Las Vegas Strip and across the street from the Fashion Show Las Vegas shopping mall. Eric Trump, a son of the president-elect and executive vice president of the Trump Organization, posted about the fire on the social media platform X. He praised the fire department and local law enforcement “for their swift response and professionalism.”
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