One dead, seven injured as Cybertruck explodes outside Trump’s hotel in Las Vegas

A Tesla Cybertruck exploded right outside the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada on New Year’s Day, law enforcement authorities have confirmed. One person died in the Cybertruck, and seven minor injuries were reported, according to Las Vegas Sheriff Kevin McMahill.

The FBI is also on the scene; authorities have evacuated the hotel and are looking for “secondary leads” in the case, but McMahill says “there does not appear to be any threat to our community.”

Around 8:40 AM PT, a 2024 Cybertruck arrived at the hotel lobby, according to authorities. “We saw that smoke started to appear from the vehicle and then a large explosion from the truck occurred,” McMahill told reporters. The fire crew was on the scene in four minutes, and the fire was extinguished in an hour.

Here is an alleged video of the moment of the explosion, apparently captured by one of the hotel’s security cameras:

A single anonymous “official briefed on the probe” he told ABC News that the Cybertruck contained a load of “pyrotechnic-style mortars,” though it was unclear to that official whether the explosion was intentional. The video above appears to show fire-like explosions, but we have not confirmed its source.

Another one video shared on X shows the truck engulfed in flames just outside the hotel lobby. Several eyewitnesses reported hearing at least one explosion, and we’ve embedded more of their videos later in this story.

It is not yet clear what caused the fire. “Right now we just don’t have a lot of answers,” says FBI Special Agent Jeremy Schwartz, the agent in charge. Authorities did not have details about the person killed in the Cybertruck; we don’t even know if they were the driver. “We’re investigating a number of leads and I’m not ready to release any of that information to you alone,” says McMahill.

“We’ve never seen anything like this,” Tesla CEO Elon Musk published on X. Musk promised to “release more information as soon as we learn something.”

The news of the fire comes amid numerous reports that Musk is reaching out to President-elect Donald Trump. Moss spent New Year’s Eve at Mar-a-Lago and it is said sat during Trump’s dinner with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Musk has also been staying in a cottage on Trump’s property in Florida since Election Day, according to the report a report from The New York Times.

It also comes in between a terrorist attack in New Orleanswhere a driver rammed a pickup truck into a crowd of people in the French Quarter, killing 10; Las Vegas authorities cited the incident as one of the reasons they are carefully checking for possible “secondary devices.”

However, while authorities say they want Las Vegas residents to “stay away from the area,” Sheriff McMahill suggests the Vegas incident is likely over: “We believe everything is safe now.”

Several others on X said they witnessed an “explosion” and captured video of the rising smoke. Alcides Antunesthat image culminates this story, it says that the car first caught fire, then there were three big pops that could have been beaten that exploded. Max Radford stated there were many explosions; Stephen Felando stated the windows were shaking violently on the 53rd floor of the building.

“Ayackle,” who captured the lobby video, says the vehicle “went down” shortly after pulling up to the lobby, then boomed.

“It started as colorful fireworks,” they said wrote about X.

“Me and my husband were literally standing where the luggage is in the footage. I saw it just pulled, and it went down like a bus, and boom it goes. At first it looked like fireworks or something, but then I immediately feared for our lives thinking it might be a bomb and ran.” they added.

Donald Trump has yet to make a public statement about the incident, but Eric Trump weighed in: “Earlier today, an electric vehicle fire was reported to have occurred in the porte cochère of Trump Las Vegas. The safety and well-being of our guests and staff remains our top priority. We extend our sincere gratitude to the Las Vegas Fire Department and local law enforcement for their quick and professional response.

Update, January 1st: Add a lot more details, including directly from law enforcement, and an alleged video of the moment of the explosion.

Correction, January 1: Jeff Bezos is the founder of Amazon, but he is no longer its CEO as we originally wrote.