EXCLUSIVE: Owner Of Tesla Cybertruck Used In Vegas Bombing Recalls Hour Spent With Suspect

The owner of the Tesla Cybertruck that was blown up in front of the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas says the suspected attacker was “pretty calm and chill” when renting the car days earlier in Colorado, and stayed in contact with questions about the vehicle up until the day before the explosion.

In an exclusive interview with The Daily Wire, the owner, whose name is being withheld due to privacy concerns, says he spent an hour with Matthew Livelsberger when the latter picked up the car on Saturday, December 28. The vehicle was rented using Turo, a service that facilitates rentals directly from car owners, and the pair met at a Denver, Colorado hotel, according to text message correspondence reviewed by The Daily Wire.

Livelsberger appeared “normal” during the interaction, and set the car’s navigation for Las Vegas soon after renting the car, the owner says.

“He didn’t know how to use the truck and so I, just like every Turo that I rent out, I walk them through everything,” the owner told The Daily Wire. The owner described Livelsberger as “for all intents and purposes, a normal dude,” saying that “he seemed pretty calm and chill,” the owner said.

The owner, who has cooperated with authorities, says Livelsberger said he intended to drive the Cybertruck to the Grand Canyon, and recalled questioning Livelsberger about having such a long drive on the itinerary for a short three-day rental. But he also recalls noticing that he was navigating to the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas from the start.

“‘That’s a really long drive for three days. How are you going to do that?’” the owner says he asked Livelsberger. “He said he was going to the Grand Canyon, but I noticed he was mapping to Vegas. He was mapping to the Trump Hotel.”

Livelsberger is alleged to have parked the vehicle in front of the Trump property with a trunk full of explosives and fireworks. Surveillance video at the scene shows the truck exploding into a ball of flames just before 9:00 a.m. on Wednesday, and the incident is being investigated as an act of terror.

The owner says that he talked to Livelsberger the day before the incident, and that just a few hours before the explosion, he had received a message that Livelsberger was extending his rental.

Livelsberger also called the Cybertruck owner on New Year’s Eve to ask how to operate the vehicle’s hazard lights, he says. At 3:00 a.m. on January 1, he says he received a message requesting to extend the rental for two more days.

The Cybertruck owner said that Livelsberger was in regular communication throughout the duration of the rental, and asked a lot of questions. In hindsight, his questions now make “more sense.”

“He asked a bunch of questions that now make a lot more sense, like, how the outlet works in the back. My guess is that he must have used that somehow,” the owner recalled. “He was asking me, like, ‘How do I turn it on? Can I turn it on from outside the car?’”

The owner was able to monitor the vehicle’s location throughout the rental, until he was locked out of the system after the explosion. The Cybertruck owner said that Livelsberger went directly to a sporting goods store in the Denver area, potentially to buy items that could be used as explosives. Photographs sent by Livelsberger of the vehicle, and reviewed by The Daily Wire, confirm the stop at the sporting goods store.

After that, he entered the Las Vegas Trump Hotel into the Tesla’s navigation system, the owner says.

The Cybertruck owner says that Livelsberger turned off the vehicle’s live camera feed at some point the night before the attack. He also said that the “Tesla app went dark right around when the bomb went off.” He said Tesla should have all of the footage of Livelsberger on their cloud, which the owner cannot currently access. Tesla didn’t respond to inquiries.

Law enforcement officials said Thursday that Livelsberger shot himself in the head before the explosives were detonated.

Authorities are still searching for a motive. The Associated Press is reporting that Livelsberger “may have gotten into a fight with his wife about relationship issues shortly before he rented the Tesla and bought the guns.”

Livelsberger served in the U.S. Army Special Forces, otherwise known as Green Berets, at the time of his death. CBS News has reported that he “was serving in Germany but was on leave in Colorado at the time of the incident.”

Livelsberger’s uncle, Dean Livelsberger, told The Independent that his nephew “loved Trump” and he “was always a very, very patriotic soldier, a patriotic American.”

With Elon Musk teaming up with President Trump in recent months and slated to lead a proposed Department of Government Efficiency, the imagery of a burning Cybertruck parked outside of a Trump property is not being viewed as a coincidence by law enforcement officials

“It’s not lost on us that it’s in front of the Trump building, that it’s a Tesla vehicle,” said Spencer Evans, the Las Vegas FBI agent in charge of the investigation.

The owner of the Cybertruck said that Livelsberger didn’t mention politics, and seemed to love Tesla.

“Tesla and everybody, obviously are asking me all kinds of questions, like ‘Did he say anything about Elon Musk? Did he say anything about Donald Trump? Did he say anything political?’ He didn’t say anything about any of that stuff. He actually seemed kind of like a fan-boy of the car,” he said.

The Denver Gazette reported on Thursday that Livelsberger’s ex-girlfriend, Alicia Arritt, says that he texted her Sunday morning praising the Cybertruck and saying that it made him “feel like Batman or halo.”

The same report says Arritt claims his “behavior changed in 2019 after he returned from a tour in the Middle East with a traumatic brain injury.”

The owner said when he first heard of the explosion, he thought it couldn’t have been Livelsberger, because of how normal their interaction was.

“In my head, I feel like, maybe it wasn’t him,” the owner said. “Maybe someone just took the car. Maybe he bought all that stuff just to go camping. And then somebody just grabbed it and, like, used it.”

Vikki Migoya, a Public Affairs Officer of the FBI’s Denver office, said she was unable to answer specific questions about the “ongoing” investigation.

“FBI Denver; the Denver Field Division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; and the Colorado Springs Police Department today conducted law enforcement activity at a residential address in Colorado Springs,” the spokeswoman said in a statement. “FBI Denver personnel and specialized teams were on-site for several hours. This activity is related to the explosion in Las Vegas on Wednesday; due to the ongoing nature of the investigation, no further information will be provided out of Denver.”