Decorated Army Special Forces Master Sgt. Matthew Livelsberger had an eight-month-old daughter at home and a new drone assignment that friends said excited him. He wrote glowing reviews on Yelp praising the tattoo parlor in his hometown of Colorado Springs and touting the benefits of float 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 leave from his station in Germany and his father had thought he would return to Germany. He said nothing seemed wrong with his son.
But days later, Matthew Livelsberger would rent a Tesla Cybertruck, buy two firearms, take a winding 1,000-mile drive from Denver to Las Vegas, and put yourself at the center of one of the two concussion 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, in these types of events, we’re always concerned about determining what the motive is,” said Spencer Evans, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Las Vegas Division. “We understand this is at the forefront of everyone’s minds, which is why exploring what exactly motivates it remains our first priority.”
Finding out what drove Livelsberger to it explode a pile of fireworks and fuel tanks for the Trump Hotel on the Las Vegas Strip is not just a law enforcement priority. It’s also a question that has left his family and friends with heavy hearts and a longing for answers.
Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department
Livelsberger’s history offers few direct clues.
A high school football star in Bucyrus, Ohio, he enlisted in the Army after high school through a program called 18xray that allows candidates to train to serve in the Special Forces without prior military experience.
He made several tours of Afghanistan and even started a charity campaign to bring toys to the children there.
In 2007, he helped resettle a former Afghan interpreter he had served with in Afghanistan. CBS News spoke with the interpreter, who said Livelsberger was very kind to him and his family and often came to their home for dinner, although that had not been the case for years.
Livelsberger divorced his first wife, remarried and had an 8-month-old child 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 five tours of Afghanistan; Livelsberger, he said, had a “remarkable” military career.
“The American people still don’t understand the quality of quantifying that service. You could say they went to Afghanistan, but what did they really do?” said this service representative. In Livelsberger’s case, he said, “he was part of a Special Forces team at the very edge of American support, operating with a lot of trust and very little guidance, and allowed it to happen, in constant danger.”
US 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 counter-incursions and special reconnaissance missions. “The Oppresso Liber,” is their Latin motto: “Liberating the oppressed.”
The tight-knit Green Beret community is reeling in the aftermath of the Cybertruck explosion. Numerous former Green Berets spoke to CBS News to express their dismay over Livelsberger’s actions.
Many talked about his accolades as a soldier and how he was a “stand-up guy.” Others, shocked by the news, did not believe he was involved – that perhaps someone had stolen Livelsberger’s identity, they suspected. The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department confirmed this on Thursday Livelsberger was positively identified as the driver of the Tesla Cybertruck. His death was ruled a suicide by the Clark County Office of the Coroner. Authorities said he shot himself in the head before the vehicle explosion at the Trump International Hotel and that they found a gun at his feet.
Livelsberger previously served in Tajikistan and received the Department of State Meritorious Honor Award for service at the embassy, according to his LinkedIn profile. Now the apparently good resume left only questions.
Those answers could still come, law enforcement officials said Thursday, with help from 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 news conference Thursday. “We know we have a bomb attack, and it is a bomb attack that certainly has factors that raise concerns. It is not lost on us that it is in front of the Trump building, that it is a Tesla vehicle, but we have no information at this time that definitively tells us or suggests that it was because of this specific ideology, or any of the reasoning behind it. That is the purpose of the investigation we are conducting is to get to the bottom of what exactly happened, why and how.
James LaPorta
