USA: Connection between attacks in New Orleans and Las Vegas?

A deadly terrorist attack in the coastal city of New Orleans clouds the New Year’s mood in the USA: A man drives a rented pick-up truck into the busy party area Bourbon Street. The suspected IS supporter killed 15 people. He was shot dead by police after a firefight.

On the same day, a Tesla Cybertruck exploded in front of a hotel belonging to the upcoming US President Donald Trump in Las Vegas. One person dies and several are injured. The vehicle was therefore loaded with large fireworks and petrol cans.

Investigators in the USA are now checking whether there is a connection between the attack in New Orleans and the incident in Las Vegas. This was announced by US President Joe Biden. There is no concrete evidence of this yet, he said. In response to the explosion in Las Vegas, the outgoing US President had previously ordered federal authorities to provide assistance if necessary.

“We think it’s an isolated incident,” said Jeremy Schwartz of the FBI. It cannot be assumed “that a number of people out there supported this or helped with it.” He did not provide details about the person behind the wheel of the Cybertruck who died in the explosion and has not yet been identified by police.

Las Vegas Sheriff Kevin McMahill said the Tesla vehicle pulled up to the glass entrance of the Trump International Hotel when a “large explosion” occurred.

The shape of the Cybertruck “made it possible to contain the damage,” McMahill said. The detonation wave rose upwards. The video of the incident shows that the explosion did not even break the hotel’s glass doors.

Sheriff McMahill referred to the attack in New Orleans but did not make the connection. So far there is no evidence of connections to jihadists like in the attack in New Orleans, he said.

But: “We know that Elon Musk is working with President-elect Trump, and it was Trump Tower,” McMahill added. “So there are obviously things to be concerned about and we continue to look at that.”

According to McMahill, the vehicle was rented in Colorado – through the same brokerage website from which the New Orleans attacker rented his pickup truck.

According to the video footage, the gray vehicle standing in front of the hotel entrance – a kind of pickup truck – burst into flames. This was followed by smaller explosions like fireworks. Thick smoke rose above the vehicle. The hotel was evacuated, according to McMahill.

The head of the electric car manufacturer Tesla is billionaire Elon Musk, who Trump made his special advisor. The entrepreneur wrote on his online service It had “nothing to do with the vehicle itself”.

McMahill expressly thanked Musk for his cooperation in the investigation. The company boss passed on to the police, among other things, videos of Tesla charging stations where the electric car was charged on the way from Colorado to Las Vegas. The car arrived in Las Vegas a good hour before the explosion and drove up and down in front of the hotel for a while, the sheriff said – this is based on recordings from surveillance cameras and the automated recording of license plates. Modern technology has proven to be very helpful in the investigation.

Authorities classified the attack in New Orleans as a terrorist attack. It was therefore committed by the former US soldier Shamsud-Din Jabbar. A flag of the Islamic State (IS) jihadist militia was found in his pickup truck. According to Biden, he had also published videos on online networks a few hours before the crime that suggested that he had been “inspired” by IS.

According to Biden, in the recordings that he posted on social networks, the perpetrator made it clear that he was driven “by the desire to kill.”

Biden emphasized that, according to investigators’ current findings, the perpetrator was born in the state of Texas and was a US citizen. He served in the US Army for “many years” and was listed as a reservist for years afterwards. The US President also confirmed investigators’ findings that possible explosive devices were found in the pickup truck in which the man drove into the crowd in New Orleans on New Year’s morning, as well as outside the vehicle.

It is still unclear whether the perpetrator had accomplices. According to US media reports, the investigators had meanwhile examined a surveillance video showing a suspicious group of four people. It was initially suspected that they might have planted explosive devices in the affected district. A short time later, however, they were reportedly ruled out as suspects.