Link Between New Orleans Attack And Las Vegas Blast Suspects? What FBI Said

A day after a deadly car attack in US’s New Orleans which left 15 dead and several injured on New Year’s day, another incident involving a car – a Tesla Cybertruck – at the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas has the FBI buried in investigating whether the two are linked.

A Tesla Cybertruck laden with explosives was detonated at the Trump Hotel in Vegas earlier today, killing the driver who was the prime suspect in the incident. There were no other casualties as the blast was contained by the sturdy build quality of the vehicle. While investigating the scene the FBI found gasoline canisters and large firework mortars packed inside the Cybertruck.

What raised eyebrows during the investigation though, was the fact that both suspects were US Army veterans. This led the Federal Bureau of Investigation or FBI to open a parallel probe to see if there is a link.

While the incident in New Orleans, where the suspect ploughed a pick-up truck through a crowd, has been declared a terror attack with a link to ISIS, the one in Vegas is still being probed and hasn’t been labelled so.

The man who was driving the Tesla Cybertruck and blew it up in Vegas was 37-year-old Matthew Livelsberger – a US Army veteran. Strangely, the man driving the pick-up truck in New Orleans – Shamsud Din Jabbar – had also served in the US Army. Even more intriguing is that the two men reportedly served at the same military base.

If this was not enough of a coincidence, another one that surfaced during the investigation was that both men had hired the vehicles reportedly from the same App-based car rental service Turo.

Both suspects died during the attacks. While New Orleans suspect Jabbar died in a shootout with the police after driving through the crowd, Vegas blast suspect Livelsberger died in the explosion and his body was found in the vehicle by security agencies.

According to local media reports, Livelsberger served in the Special Forces of the US Army for 18 years. In comparison, New Orleans suspect Jabbar served in the US military for less than a decade and had served in Afghanistan for a year from 2009 to 2010.

The New Orleans mass killer had claimed on video that he supported terror group ISIS. Shamsud-Din Jabbar “drove from Houston to New Orleans on the evening of the 31st and he posted several videos to an online platform proclaiming his support for ISIS,” FBI deputy assistant director Christopher Raia said at a press conference.

The FBI confirmed that in one video, Jabbar “explains he originally planned to harm his family and friends, but was concerned the news headlines would not focus on the ‘war between the believers and the disbelievers.'”

An ISIS flag was also found in the pick-up truck he was driving that day.