LAS VEGAS: One person died and seven others were injured Wednesday when a Tesla Cybertruck that appeared to be carrying fireworks caught fire and exploded outside President-elect Donald Trump’s Las Vegas hotel, authorities said.
Las Vegas Metropolitan Police and Clark County Fire Department officials told a news conference that a person died inside the futuristic-looking pickup truck and they were working to get the body out. Seven people nearby had minor injuries and several were taken to a hospital.
The fire in the valet area of the Trump International Hotel Las Vegas was reported at 8:40 a.m., a county spokeswoman said in a statement.
According to a law enforcement official, the truck was rented via the Turo app and appeared to have a load of fireworks. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
Law enforcement officials have not ruled out terrorism as a possible motive, a person familiar with the matter said. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss details of the investigation.
“I know you have a lot of questions,” Jeremy Schwartz, acting special agent in charge for the FBI’s Las Vegas office, told reporters. “We don’t have a lot of answers.”
President Joe Biden was briefed on the explosion. The truck explosion came hours after a driver rammed a truck into a crowd in New Orleans’ famed French Quarter early on New Year’s Day, killing at least 10 people before being shot to death by police.
“The whole Tesla senior team is investigating this matter right now,” Tesla CEO Elon Musk wrote in a statement on X, adding: “We’ve never seen anything like this.”
In Las Vegas, witness Ana Bruce, visiting from Brazil, said she heard three explosions.
“The first one where we saw the fire, the second one, I guess, was the battery or something like that, and the third was the big one that smoked the entire area and was the moment when everyone was told to evacuate and stay away,” Bruce said.
Her travel companion, Alcides Antunes, showed video he took of flames lapping the sides of the silver-colored vehicle.
The 64-story hotel is just off the Las Vegas Strip and across the street from the Fashion Show Las Vegas shopping mall.
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.”

Russian officials warned of severe environmental damage Wednesday as thousands of people came out to clean up tons of fuel oil that spilled out of two storm-stricken tankers more than two weeks ago in the Kerch Strait, near Moscow-occupied Crimea.
More than 10,000 people, largely volunteers, raced to rescue wildlife and remove tons of sand saturated with mazut, a heavy, low-quality oil product, according to Russian news reports.
Authorities in Russia’s southern Krasnodar region last week announced a region-wide emergency, as the fuel oil continued washing up on the coastline 10 days after one tanker ran aground and the other was left damaged and adrift on Dec. 15.
The move came days after Russian President Vladimir Putin called the oil spill an “ecological disaster.”
On Wednesday, New Year’s Day, Krasnodar officials said the oil kept on surfacing on the beaches of Anapa, a popular local resort.
More than 71,000 tons of contaminated sand and soil had been removed along 56 kilometers (35 miles) of shoreline since the original spill, Russia’s emergencies ministry reported on Wednesday morning.
On Dec. 23, the ministry estimated that up to 200,000 tons in total may have been contaminated.
Some Russian media critical of the Kremlin cited Russian volunteers as saying that state support has been inadequate as they grapple with the consequences of the spill. Some said they experienced headaches, nausea and vomiting after spending hours inhaling toxic fumes, and complained of insufficient equipment and protective measures.
Others called for international specialists to be sent in, citing the scale of the spill and the likely extent of the impact.
Photos circulating on social media and local news channels showed seabirds coated in black fuel oil.
The spill may have killed more than 20 dolphins, the local Delfa dolphin rescue center said, adding tests were ongoing to ascertain the cause of the deaths.
The Kerch Strait separates the Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula from Russia and is an important global shipping route, providing passage from the inland Sea of Azov to the Black Sea.
It has also been a key point of conflict between Russia and Ukraine after Moscow annexed the peninsula in 2014. In 2016, Ukraine took Moscow to the Permanent Court of Arbitration, where it accused Russia of trying to seize control of the area illegally. In 2021, Russia closed the strait for several months.
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the head of the office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, last month described the oil spill as a “large-scale environmental disaster” and called for additional sanctions on Russian tankers.