A note on a phone inside the Cybertruck a decorated US-born soldier blew up in Las Vegas on Wednesday said that what he did “was not a terrorist attack.”
“It was a wake-up call,” Matthew Livelsberger, 37, reportedly wrote, according to KLAS.
Police found two phones in the rented Cybertruck and have so far been able to gain access to one of them, where they found two notes, KNTV reported.
In a letter addressed to “Fellow Servicemembers, Veterans, and all Americans,” Livelsberger decried “weak and feckless leadership” and urged “military and vets (to) move on DC starting now.”
He called for occupying roads and federal buildings and locking down highways “until the purge is complete.”
“Try peaceful means first, but be prepared to fight to get the Dems out of the fed government and military by any means neessary,” he wrote. “They all must go and a hard reset must occur for our country to avoid collapse.”
The second letter calls on a focus on “strength and winning.”
“Masculinity is good and men must be leaders,” he wrote. “Strength is a deterrent and fear is the product.”
Livelsberger further decried income inequality, high cost of living, diversity, and the “embarassing and disgusting” number of homeless people.
“Consider this last sunset of ’24 and my actions the end of our sickness and a new chapter of health for our people,” he wrote. “Rally around the Trump, Musk, Kennedy and ride this wave to the highest hegemony for all Americans! We are second to none.”
Livelsberger killed himself with a gunshot to the head before his rented truck exploded. He was the only fatality. Seven other people suffered minor injuries. He said in one of the letters he chose the explosion because “Americans only pay attention to spectacles and violence.”
Investigators say Livelsberger acted alone and had no connection with the truck attack in New Orleans a few hours earlier. In that attack Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar, a US-born military veteran, killed 14 people and injured 35 more as he rammed into them on a crowded Bourbon Street in his rental truck. Jabbar was killed in a shootout with police. He posted videos as he drove from his Texas home to New Orleans saying he had pledged allegiance to Islamic State.
FBI Special Agent Spencer Evans said the two did not serve in the same unit and investigators have found no evidence that they were ever in contact.
“It’s evident that [Livelsberger] considered, planned, and thoughtfully prepared for this act alone,” FBI Special Agent Spencer Evans said.
Evans also said that it “ultimately appears to be a tragic case of suicide involving a heavily decorated combat veteran who was suffering with PTSD and other issues.”
