One person is dead and seven others were injured when a Tesla cybertruck exploded outside of President-elect Donald Trump’s hotel in Las Vegas.
The explosion happened around 8:40 a.m. Wednesday in the valet area outside of the lobby of Trump International Hotel at Las Vegas Boulevard and Sammy Davis Jr. Drive.
Las Vegas County Sheriff Kevin McMahill said at a news conference that one person died inside the vehicle and that they were working to get the body out.
“There is one deceased individual in the Cybertruck, and I don’t know whether it’s a male or female,” McMahill said.
”At this time, we are investigating a number of leads, and I’m not prepared to release any of that information to you just yet. We can. I can tell you that there are seven victims right now that sustained injuries from the explosion.”
Two of the injured were transported to UMC for treatment. McMahill said all the injuries were minor and there doesn’t appear to be any further threat.
The fire has since been put out by the Clark County fire department. The cause wasn’t immediately known, but McMahill noted during the presser that officials are “very well aware” of the New Orleans attack in which a man intentionally drove a truck into a crowd of people celebrating New Year’s Eve just hours earlier, killing 10 people.
He said that officials are “taking all of the precautions that we need to take to keep our community safe” and that they are “looking for secondary devices.”
Video posted on social media showed different angles of the massive explosion. Guests staying at the hotel and on surrounding properties told FOX5 that they heard the loud explosion which many described as being louder than the New Year’s Eve fireworks.
“It was shaking the glass, it was so loud,” one witness who was staying at the Resorts World on the Las Vegas Strip told KLAS. “I looked out and see smoke and me and my wife booked it out of there.”
Eric Trump, a son of the president-elect and executive vice president of the Trump Organization, posted about the fire on the social media platform X.
He praised the fire department and local law enforcement “for their swift response and professionalism.”
The 64-story hotel is just off the famed Las Vegas Strip and across the street from the Fashion Show Las Vegas shopping mall.
