Aiexpress – The first pictures from inside the burned-out hull of the Tesla Cybertruck that exploded outside the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas were released by the authorities. The pictures show that the vehicle was full of fireworks and fuel, which almost certainly made the blast radius bigger when it finally caught fire Wednesday morning.
At least seven people were hurt, and the driver of the car was killed. The Las Vegas Police Department said they were looking into the event as a “possible act of terror.”
Police said that the explosives in the car were a mix of gasoline tanks, camping fuel, and big mortars, which are a type of fireworks. It is still not clear how they were first lit.
The billionaire CEO of the car company Tesla, Elon Musk, later said that the car itself wasn’t what caused the explosion. A note from him on X said, “All vehicle telemetry was positive at the time of the explosion.”
Sheriff Kevin McMahill also thanked Musk and the company for giving them more details about the explosion that helped solve the case. Later, he said that the strong design of the car helped to “limit” the blast and keep people from getting hurt or the building from getting worse.
“That truck’s outside looks like it’s in great shape as it sits there,” he said. “The blast mostly went up and out of the truck. If you watch the video, you can see that the front blast doors at the Trump Hotel were not even broken by that blast.”
A law enforcement source who spoke to the Associated Press said that the electric car was rented through the private app Turo. In New Orleans on Wednesday morning, a man reportedly used that same app before driving his truck into a crowd of people celebrating New Year’s Eve. The crash killed 15 people and hurt more than 30 others. McMahill said that his department was looking into whether the two crimes were linked.
Just before 9 a.m., there was a blast. One witness, who first shared a video of the scene on social media, said that the car burst as soon as it pulled up to the hotel’s valet stand, making the windows “shake” very hard.
Eric Trump, a manager at the hotel in Las Vegas that is owned by the Trump Organization, praised the quick actions of first responders.
“Our guests and staff’s safety and well-being will always be our first priority,” he said.
