A decorated Army Special Forces sergeant. Matthew Livelsberger had an 8-month-old daughter at home and a new mission involving drones that friends said excited him. He wrote a glowing Yelp review praising a tattoo parlor in his Colorado Springs hometown and touting the benefits of float spas. And the last time his father spoke to him on Christmas, he told CBS News everything seemed normal.
He “loved the military and America,” Roger Livelsberger said.
Matthew Livelsberger, 37, was on leave from his station in Germany and his father thought he would return there. He didn’t say anything to his son.
But a few days later Matthew Livelsberger hire Get a Tesla Cybertruck, buy a couple of guns, drive the 1,000 winding miles from Denver to Las Vegas and put yourself in the center of one of them. two Concussion New Year’s Day Attack. What led him there remains, at least for now, a frustrating mystery to those who know him and those investigating the attack.
“Obviously we’re always interested in these types of cases to determine what the motive was,” said Spencer Evans, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Las Vegas division. “We know it’s at the forefront of everyone’s thoughts, so investigating exactly what the motive was is our top priority.”
Find out what Livelsberger got up to A ragtag group explodes fireworks The fuel tanks in front of the Trump Hotel on the Las Vegas Strip are not only a law enforcement priority. These are questions that have left his family and friends with heavy hearts and longing for answers.
Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department
Livelsberger’s history offers few immediate clues.
A football star in high school in Bucyrus, Ohio, he joined the Army after high school through a program called 18xray, which can train applicants to join special forces without prior military experience.
He did several tours in Afghanistan and also started a charity project to deliver toys to children there.
In 2010, he helped resettle an Afghan interpreter he had worked with in Afghanistan. CBS News spoke with an interpreter who said Livelsberger was very kind to him and his family and often came to their home for meals, if not for years.
Livelsberger divorced his first wife, remarried, and had an eight-month-old child with his second wife. She continued to live in Colorado Springs and he traveled back and forth to Germany.
Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department
People who worked with Livelsberger described him as a kind person who went above and beyond. One person described him as an “idealist” and a true hero who continued to serve his country, including five tours of Afghanistan. Livelsberger had an “incredible” military career, he said.
“Americans still don’t understand the level of quantification of that service. Someone can say they went to Afghanistan, but what did they actually do?” This soldier said: In Livelsberger’s case, he said, “he operates in a special forces team on the farthest periphery of U.S. support, operating with a lot of trust and little direction, in a constantly damaging manner.”
The US Army Special Forces, known as the Green Berets, is a small but elite special operations unit within the US military portfolio that traces its roots back to the Cold War. Small teams of Green Berets, known as Operational Detachment Alphas, are trained to carry out specialized missions ranging from counterinsurgency and unconventional warfare to raids and special reconnaissance missions. “De Oppresso Liber” is their Latin motto, “Liberating the Oppressed.”
The close-knit Green Beret community is reeling from the aftermath of the Cybertruck explosion. Numerous former Green Berets spoke to CBS News expressing their disappointment with Livelsberger’s actions.
Many people spoke of the praise he received as a soldier and how he was a “standing man.” Others, shocked by the news, did not believe he was involved. Perhaps someone had stolen Livelsberger’s identity, they speculated. The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department confirmed this on Thursday. Livelsberger was positively identified as the driver. A look at the Tesla Cybertruck. His death was ruled a suicide by the Clark County Coroner’s Office. Authorities said he shot himself in the head and recovered a handgun at his feet before a car explosion at the Trump International Hotel.
According to his LinkedIn profile, Livelsberger previously worked in Tajikistan and received the State Department Distinguished Service Award for his services to the embassy. Now there are only questions left on your seemingly great resume.
Law enforcement officials, with help from those who know Livelsberger best, said Thursday that those answers may still be coming.
“We have to focus on what we know and what we don’t know,” FBI Director Evans said at a news conference Thursday. “We know we’ve had a bombing, and it’s a bombing that certainly has cause for concern. The fact that it’s in front of the Trump Building and the fact that it’s a Tesla vehicle is not lost on us. But at this point, we don’t have that information.” There is no way to say or imply for certain that this is due to a particular ideology or the reasoning behind it. That is the purpose of the investigation we are conducting: to find out what happened, why and how it happened.”
james laporta
