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Today β€” 3 January 2025Main stream

Brett Favre questions details of New Orleans attack, Trump Tower bombing: 'Hard to see what's real'

3 January 2025 at 18:35

NFL Hall of Famer Brett Favre expressed confusion and skepticism about the details related to the deadly New Year's Day incidents in New Orleans and Las Vegas.

In an X post Friday, Favre asked followers "what's going on" with the terror attack in New Orleans that killed 14 and the Cybertruck bombing outside Trump Tower in Las Vegas that killed one.

"What’s going on with the New Orleans and Trump Hotel story? A lot of information and hard to sift through to see what’s real!" Favre wrote.Β 

CLICK HERE FOR MORE SPORTS COVERAGE ON FOXNEWS.COM

Many of Favre's followers responded, sharing similar skepticism.Β 

"Whatever the FBI says, believe the opposite!" one user wrote.Β 

Another user responded, advising Favre and others to "ignore the media."Β 

"None of it. Take in the event. Ignore the media," the user wrote.Β 

More details about the two attacks have emerged in recent days.

Shamsud-Din Jabbar, the man who plowed a rented pickup truck into New Year's revelers on New Orleans' Bourbon Street Wednesday, and Matthew Livelsberger, the man eyed in the explosion of a Tesla Cybertruck outside the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas hours later, were both Army soldiers who served at Fort Liberty and deployed to Aghanistan in 2009, Fox News Digital previously reported.Β 

Las Vegas, Clark County Sheriff Kevin McMahill said that while both men served in Afghanistan in 2009, any potential ties there were still under investigation

"We don't have any evidence that they were in the same province in Afghanistan, the same location or the same unit," McMahill said. "Again, something else that remains under investigation."

SUGAR BOWL'S CORPORATE SPONSOR CEO SLAMMED FOR 'ADDICTION TO DIVISIVENESS' STATEMENT AFTER TERROR ATTACK

A defense official told Fox News there was no evidence based on their military service that the attacks were related. While both men served at Fort Liberty, formerly Fort Bragg, they were there at different times. The North Carolina base is home to more than 50,000 service members.Β 

The FBI released surveillance images of the New Orleans attack that show Jabbar just about an hour before he allegedly sped a rented Ford pickup through a crowd of Bourbon Street revelers in an attack officials say was inspired by the Islamic State.Β 

More than 30 others were injured. Despite previously investigating the possibility of accomplices in the attack, the FBI said Thursday the bureau is confident Jabbar acted alone.Β 

The FBI recovered a black ISIS flag from Jabbar's rented pickup truck that was used for the attack.Β 

"This investigation is only a little more than 24 hours old, and we have no indication at this point that anyone else was involved in this attack other than Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar," FBI Deputy Assistant Director Christopher Raia of the counterterrorism division at FBI headquarters said Thursday.Β 

"The FBI is surging people and assets to this area from across the region and across the nation. Special agents in field offices across the country are assisting with potential aspects of this investigation and following up on leads. Additional teams of special agents, professional staff and victim specialists continue to arrive to provide more investigative power and assistance to the victims and their families."Β 

Follow Fox News Digital’s sports coverage on X, and subscribe to the Fox News Sports Huddle newsletter.

Explosive experts: The Las Vegas blast could have been worse

3 January 2025 at 18:12
Several investigators photographing an exploded Tesla Cybertruck in Las Vegas.
Explosives experts said the level of damage of the Las Vegas blast was likely limited in part because of the materials used and the execution of the apparent attack.

WADE VANDERVORT/AFP/Getty Images

  • Experts told BI the explosives detonated in an apparent attack outside a Trump hotel didn't appear sophisticated.
  • One explosives expert said the incident, where the driver was an active-duty Army service member, appeared "poorly executed."
  • Authorities said the explosives were "not what we would expect from an individual with this type of military experience."

Explosive experts told Business Insider the damage from the materials detonated inside a Tesla Cybertruck in front of the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas would likely have been worse if the items used had been more sophisticated.

The explosive-laden Cybertruck, which authorities say carried gasoline tanks, camping fuel, and large firework mortars, injured at least seven people. The driver, an active-duty Army service member named Matthew Alan Livelsberger, shot himself moments before the explosives detonated on Wednesday, authorities said.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk took to social media in the wake of the incident to praise the Cybertruck's design and suggest it helped limit the damage of the explosion.

Nick Glumac, a mechanical science and engineering professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, told BI that the volume of the explosion was likely due to the types of explosives used. Glumac said this was a "poorly executed" incident if the intent was to cause major damage.

"It would be very difficult to get the types of fuels here to make into a large scale destruction kind of event," Glumac said.

Glumac said similar improvised explosive device blasts look very different from what occurred on January 1. He also pointed to the Oklahoma City Bombing in 1995, when Army veteran Timothy McVeigh detonated an explosive-laden rental truck that killed 168 people and reduced a third of the federal building to rubble.

"That was very carefully planned. They knew what they were doing," Glumac said about the Oklahoma City Bombing, adding that the Cybertruck explosion on January 1, by contrast, appeared "very improvised."

'The level of sophistication is not what we would expect from an individual with this type of military experience'

Car and truck bombs were a key feature of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, to which the suspect deployed at least three times. In many of those instances, vehicles were packed with enough explosives to blast fortified positions or take down buildings. The war in Ukraine has similarly suggested that heavily armored vehicles and tanks can be used as rolling car bombs.

Officials spoke about the explosive materials used in the incident during a Thursday press conference.

"The level of sophistication is not what we would expect from an individual with this type of military experience," Kenny Cooper, an assistant special agent in charge for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said at a Las Vegas Metropolitan Police press conference, adding that most of the materials in the vehicle were to "help fuel a greater explosion."

Ali Rangwala, a fire protection engineering professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, said that the driver may have miscalculated the explosion, and it might not have been released instantaneously.

"Some of the explosives might not have triggered on time systematically," Rangwala said.

"The only way to create an instantaneous energy release, as in the case of a bomb, is for all of the energetic material to ignite in micro- or milli-seconds," Jim Wesevich, a global service line leader of forensics at safety and security firm Jensen Hughes, told BI in written commentary.

A military official told BI that Livelsberger "wasn't a bomb maker." But his military occupational specialty (MOS) within the 10th Special Forces Group was 18Z, making him a special forces operations sergeant, which the Army says, "trains and maintains proficiency in all major duties associated with Special Forces."

Cooper said it was too early to know if there was "sophisticated connectivity" to the components or to "give any determination" as to how the explosion was initiated. Officials said they discovered consumer fireworks, mortars, aerial shells, fuel enhancers, and explosive targets that Cooper said could be purchased at "any sporting goods store."

Experts say a vehicle's design may shape the trajectory of a blast

Elon Musk, in a social media post Wednesday, called the Cybertruck the "worst possible choice for a car bomb, as its stainless steel armor will contain the blast better than any other commercial vehicle."

Kevin McMahill, sheriff of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, said the Cybertruck's design helped limit the explosion.

"The fact that this was a Cybertruck really limited the damage that occurred inside of the valet because it had most of the blast go up and through the truck and out," McMahill said in a briefing.

Rangwala said the damage may have been partly limited because a Cybertruck's roof, which includes a large glass pane, would clear pressure from inside the vehicle early in the explosion. The pressure from an explosion would be felt on all sides equally if it wasn't relieved by going upward through the roof, he said.

Glumac and Brian Meacham, an engineer and director of risk and regulatory consulting at Crux Consulting LLC who spoke to BI over email, said that they would have expected similar scenarios if the incident took place in a traditional pickup truck.

Michael Villahermosa, a US Army commander with a background in explosive ordnance disposal, said on X that photos of the items used in the blast suggest the explosives were "poorly constructed and poorly thought out."

As he said on X, "People are using the Las Vegas bombing to show the quality of the Cybertruck," when, in his view, "it shows the quality of the explosive device that was used."

Staff writer Ryan Pickrell contributed to this report.

Read the original article on Business Insider

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