Soldier who blew up Tesla at Trump hotel left note saying blast was to be a ‘wake up call’ for US
Associated PressLAS VEGAS — A highly decorated Army soldier who fatally shot himself in a Tesla Cybertruck just before it blew up outside the Trump hotel in Las Vegas left notes saying the New Year’s Day explosion was a stunt to serve as a “wake up call” for the country’s ills, investigators said Friday. Matthew Livelsberger, a 37-year-old Green Beret from Colorado Springs, Colorado, also wrote in notes he left on his cellphone that he needed to “cleanse” his mind “of the brothers I’ve lost and relieve myself of the burden of the lives I took.” Livelsberger served in the Army since 2006 and deployed twice to Afghanistan. He said in one letter that the U.S. was “terminally ill and headed toward collapse.” Tesla engineers, meanwhile, helped extract data from the Cybertruck for investigators, including Livelsberger’s path between charging stations from Colorado through New Mexico and Arizona and on to Las Vegas, according to Assistant Sheriff Dori Koren. “There’s thousands if not millions of videos and photos and documents and web history and all of those things that need to be analyzed.” The new details came as investigators were still trying to determine whether Livelsberger sought to make a political point with the Tesla and the hotel bearing the president-elect’s name.