The Daily Mail has a long article about the Army Special Forces sergeant on home leave from an assignment in Germany who rented a Tesla truck, drove it to Las Vegas and blew himself up in the valet parking area of a Trump hotel. Sgt. Matthew Livelsberger was married to a woman from Mexico who is a social worker with an anti-Trump presence online to which she hasn’t posted since 2016.
If this DM article is accurate, the New Orleans and Las Vegas attacks may be independent of each other, and the timing a mere coincidence. Or not, it is still early days in these investigations and much is not yet known.
Both men appear to have been suicidal, both wished to make a statement with their death, both had served at the former Fort Bragg, both had spent years in the U.S. Army, both used the same car rental app, described as an Airbnb for renting privately owned cars, to rent EV trucks.
On the other hand, their statements appear to have targeted different “enemies.” I decode the New Orleans “enemy” as U.S. society at large. The Las Vegas “enemy” at first blush seems to be the Trump-Musk political movement currently very much in the ascendant.
It is hard to imagine a shared ideology or faith behind both acts, without positing generalized anarchism. A relatively high percentage of Army folk spend some time at Bragg, not much of a coincidence. And it isn’t clear how their respective Army MOSes would have brought them together.
I’d echo any number of fictional detectives who’ve disavowed “coincidence,” but in this case it might be just that.
