The decorated Army Special Forces Master Sgt. Matthew Livelsberger had an 8-month-old daughter at home and a new drone assignment that friends said excited him. He wrote glowing Yelp reviews praising the tattoo parlor in his hometown of Colorado Springs and touting the benefits of floating spas. And when his father last spoke to him on Christmas Day, he told CBS News, everything seemed normal.
He “loved the military and loved America,” Roger Livelsberger said.
Matthew Livelsberger, 37, was on vacation from his station in Germany and his father had thought he would return to Germany. She didn’t say anything with her son seemed wrong.
Days later, however, Matthew Livelsberger would rent a Tesla Cybertruck, buy two firearms, drive a 1,000-mile winding road from Denver to Las Vegas, and place yourself in the center of one of two blunt force attacks on New Year’s Day. What led him there remains, at least for now, a frustrating mystery to those who knew him and to those investigating the attack.
“Obviously, we’re always concerned in these types of events to find out what the motive is,” said Spencer Evans, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Las Vegas division. “We understand that this is at the forefront of everyone’s thoughts, and so looking at exactly what the motivation is remains our number one priority.”
Find out what led to Livelsberger explode a cache of fireworks and the fuel tanks in front of the Trump Hotel on the Las Vegas Strip aren’t just a priority for law enforcement. It’s also a question that has left his family and friends with heavy hearts and longing for answers.
Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department
Livelsberger’s story offers few immediate clues.
High school football star in Bucyrus, Ohio, enlisted in the Army after high school through a program called 18xray that allows applicants to train to be in the Special Forces without prior military experience .
He did several tours in Afghanistan and even started a charity campaign to bring toys to the children there.
In 2007, he helped resettle a former Afghan interpreter with whom he had served in Afghanistan. CBS News spoke with the performer, who said Livelsberger was very kind to him and his family, and often came to his house for meals, though not for many years.
Livelsberger divorced his first wife, remarried and had an 8-month-old son with his second wife. She continued to live in Colorado Springs and he traveled back and forth from Germany.
Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department
People who served with Livelsberger described him as a kind person who went above and beyond. One described him as an “idealist” and a true hero in his continued service to the country, including 5 tours in Afghanistan; Livelsberger, he said, had a “remarkable” military career.
“The American people still don’t understand that quality of quantifying that service — somebody might say they went to Afghanistan, but what did they actually do?” said this service member. In Livelsberger’s case, he said, “in a Special Forces team on the edge of American support, operating with a lot of confidence, very little direction and makes it possible, constantly in danger.”
The United States Army Special Forces, known as the Green Berets, are a small but elite special operations force within the US military portfolio, with roots dating back to the Cold War. Small teams of Green Berets, known as Operational Detachment Alphas, are trained to carry out specialized missions from counterinsurgency and unconventional warfare to combat raids and special reconnaissance missions. “De Oppresso Liber”, is its Latin motto: “Free the oppressed”.
The close-knit Green Beret community has been left reeling after the Cybertruck explosion. Numerous former Green Berets spoke to CBS News to express their dismay at Livelsberger’s actions.
Many spoke of his accolades as a soldier and how he was a “man on his feet.” Others, shocked by the news, didn’t believe he was involved: Maybe someone had stolen Livelsberger’s identity, they surmised. The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department confirmed this Thursday Livelsberger was positively identified as the driver of the Tesla Cybertruck. His death was ruled a suicide by the Clark County Coroner’s Office. Authorities said he shot himself in the head before the vehicle explosion at the Trump International Hotel and recovered a gun at his feet.
According to his LinkedIn profile, Livelsberger previously served in Tajikistan, where he received the State Department’s Meritorious Honor Award for services to the Embassy. Now, the seemingly excellent resume left only questions.
Those answers may still come, law enforcement officials said Thursday, with the help of those who knew Livelsberger best.
“We have to focus on what we know and what we don’t know,” the FBI’s Evans said at a press conference Thursday. “We know we have a bombing and it’s an attack that certainly has factors that raise concerns. We don’t miss that it’s in front of the Trump building, which is a Tesla vehicle, but we don’t have information at this point that definitively tells us or suggests that it was because of that particular ideology, or any of the reasoning behind it. That’s the purpose of the investigation we’re doing is to get to the bottom of what exactly happened, why and how.”
