Vegas Metropolitan Police Department I'm here to give you a really a brief update on what occurred on Las Vegas Boulevard this morning as you know we just had our New Year's Eve event where we successfully protected the city where over 400,000 people were here last night and that changed this morning at about 8:40 when a 2024 Tesla cyber truck pulled into the area valet of the Trump International Hotel um very quickly thereafter that the driver who was the sole occupant of the truck we saw what looked like maybe some sort of smoke and then the
truck exploded I'm going to um smoke was coming from inside of the truck after we noticed the Flash and the explosion and I'm going to show you that first video that's the Cyber truck parked right in front of the uh the doors can you play that again Carlos so the individual that was in that truck is obviously deceased um still in the truck as we speak here today our fire department folks engine 12 a number of others you'll hear from one of the fire chiefs here in just a moment arrived very quickly along with my
officers and obviously we knew that we had a much larger event than just a vehicle Fire And so there's going to be a drone video that plays to my left again you'll see as we the fire initially um they covered it with the tarp to try to get it to go out uh once the fire went out through the suppression efforts of the fire department you'll see um some of the evidence in the back of the vehicle so those are gasoline canisters they are um camp fuel canisters and large firework mortars what I also would
like you to pay attention to on that video as you see that it looks like the exterior of that truck is completely intact as it sits there the fact that this was a cyber truck um really limited the damage that occurred inside of the valet because it it had most of the blast go up through the truck and out in fact if you look on that video you'll see that the front glass doors at the Trump um Hotel were not even broken by that blast which they were parked directly in front of you can see
that in the video there what I will update I'm very well aware that there's a a name already been reported out into the media I am not going to confirm any names to you as I sit here today because I cannot do that with 100% certain certainty of who the individual is what I can tell you is we do know the truck was rented in Colorado we were able to trace that truck through the Tesla uh charging stations and it arrived here in Las Vegas this morning at about 7:30 and went uh up and down
Las Vegas Boulevard before immediately pulling into the Trump Towers unfortunately there were seven people that reported injuries um during this incident um all of them still remain at minor injuries and were treated at UMC um I would like to thank the Resorts World because as you know we had to close down the Trump and evacuate it as well as the fashion show mall and the Resorts World was very gracious in taking those hundreds of individuals in over there housing them and Fe feeding them prior to us being able to completely clear the hotel the hotel
and fashion show are back open for business the Trump will remain closed as we continue the this lengthy investigation as we move forward I'm going to uh yield now to Chief Billy Samuels but I'd like you to um also recognize all of our exceptional elected officials that have um come to support the police and the fire department and this community in remaining safe there is no further threat to the community as I sit here today um and I I just want to make sure that our community understands we believe this to be an isolated incident
and it is now uh over as far as the danger uh so Billy thank you Sheriff I'm going to reiterate some of the stuff that the sheriff has spoken upon engine 12 did arrive within four minutes of dispatch uh did extinguish the fire with assistance from the sprinkler systems and along with that electric vehicle blanket that we use on those operations uh we did encounter seven victims um all stable two of them were transported to UMC have since been released uh they were transported by Community Ambulance a total of 13 units from Clark County fire
with 26 personnel and then four units from and 17 Personnel from Las Vegas fire and rescue assisted with this operation we always do appreciate the support that we get from our hotel Partners as the sheriff was mentioned with Resorts World RTC did uh lend us 10 buses so we can Refuge the people that were evacuated from the the Trump Tower uh Community Ambulance for their uh Transportation Forest Las Vegas fire and rescue and Nevada division of Emergency Management and we do appreciate their supports we can't do that without them and like the sheriff said last
night was a huge success but uh we are prepared for whatever comes our way so thank you for that and I will turn this over to special agent in charge Jeremy Schwarz good afternoon my name is Jeremy Schwarz I'm currently the acting special agent in charge of the FBI here in Las Vegas the FBI is currently conducting an investigation on a vehicle explosion as the sheriff had just shown you a little bit ago that's being conducted through our JT ETF which is a joint terrorism task force I want to make sure everybody understands that the
the task force is comprised of law enforcement officials from the entire Valley here we're not doing anything alone and we wouldn't do anything alone without our partners making sure that we're all in lock step we've learned from uh mistakes in the past and we're not going to do that again uh we have a great relationship with our law enfor law enforcement partners and we're going to continue to do so um as of right now our number one goal is to ensure that we have the proper identification of the subject involved in this incident following that
our second objective is to determine whether this was an act of terrorism or not I know everybody's interested in that word and trying to see if we can say hey this is a terrorist attack that is our goal and that's what we're trying to do we have a ton of resources dedicated to this right now and again we're doing it with our partners we're doing it together jointly and we'll continue to do so until we figure out exactly what's going on I think most importantly as the sheriff already mentioned we believe this is an isolated
incident we do not believe that there's a bunch of folks out there supporting this or helping this and we don't hopefully that there's any other danger to the community right now but again over the next few hours and days we will continue to do our best to research that as much as we can and get to the bottom of this and we won't stop until we're 100% certain as to what happened and why thank you so I just want to clarify again so that I don't get these questions we do know who rented the truck
um we are looking at that individual but I am not prepared to release the name of any of the individuals that we are looking at um at least Le until next to Ken is notified and we have a 100% identification so with that I'll take any questions you might have I can't see hi Dana do I think it's a coincidence I don't know but what I can tell you is we're absolutely investigating any connectivity to what happened in New Orleans as well as other attacks that have been occurring around the world we're not ruling anything
out yet Dana is there any possibility that had link to Isis Sugg New Orleans yeah so the question is is there any links to Isis and I will tell you that we don't have any indication of that here in Las Vegas no overt Isis flag as was seen in in New Orleans but uh again we are investigating every aspect of this and if that comes to light we'll certainly update you I'm sorry sir was the time between the truck arrival and the expion about at 1 hour was the this the amount of time between the
arrival of the truck here in Las V at least our first notification of the arrival and the explosion that occurred at the tower it was only there for about they was sitting in the portica share for about 15 seconds before it exploded is that was that 15 where Dory go the 15 to 20 seconds I just just want to make sure I gave you the right info Donald conne invp well I mean it's a Tesla truck and we know that Elon Musk is working with president-elect Trump and it's the Trump Tower so there's obviously um
things to be concerned about there and that's something we continue to look atur procedures yeah so I'm glad to ask that question do we need to reexamine security procedures um you know we were very successful in uh the night before um I'm surprised this happen to be quite Frank with you and that's certainly something we're going to have to look at in Target hardening what that looks like but to to your question Dana I did forget to mention that I have authorized what we call an ABX roster to continue for the next two days which
is my New Year's Eve Staffing plan of of over a thousand officers both in our community neighborhoods as well as on the strip and downtown in partnership with all of the other law enforcement agencies um city of Las Vegas Marshals North Las Vegas Henderson just to ensure that even if we had a copycat or somebody else wanted to go up and conduct an attack that we have the appropriate and available resources to to to handle it have you all found anyes cyck that could have used to set out those explosives no we um the question
is did we find any devices that would be used to set off the explosives and the answer is no I don't know how they were ignited clearly with what you see in there something set them off but I don't know what it was yet do we haven't been able to process the vehicle yet hasd been in contact with Tesla C to get analytics from theic Yes actually I have to thank uh Elon Musk specifically um he gave us uh quite a bit of additional information in regards to how the vehicle was locked after it exploded
due to the force of the nature or the nature of the force uh from the explosion as well as being able to capture all of the video from the um Tesla charging stations across the country and they were sent he sent that directly to us so I appreciate his help on that I'll take one more question I'm sorry you got speak up for MEK [Music] Orleans might be Associated it's another uh the question is is the both vehicles I'm being told that New Orleans was rented from Toro and so was ours um that's another coincidence
that absolutely is continuing to Bear uh from our investigation that we have to continue to look into so thank you very much and as we get additional information for all of you I'm sorry I'll give you a chat um are are investigators using any of the city LIC plate readers that's the question is are we using the license plate readers and the technology uh one you see the Drone flight through the vehicle because it was unsafe to get there so that we're using that technology thankful to have it as well as the first indication of
that vehicle arriving here in Las Vegas came from a license plate reader so technology has been very useful to us in resolving this and again I I'll commit to come back to you all when we have confirmation of the suspect's name who they are what their background is we will get that information back out to you we'll call another press conference and and provide it I just like to again thank the mayor the Commissioners the other law enforcement leaders and of course our attorney general for for showing up and and supporting us in this event
uh it's been a Statewide effort and I appreciate it thank you
