Former FBI Special Agent Says Americans Must ‘Stay Vigilant’ After Las Vegas, New Orleans Attacks
Former FBI Special Agent urges Americans to exercise caution when attending major national events after two deadly incidents occurred back-to-back on New Year’s Day.
“Unfortunately, we’re going to continue to see these types of events, whether it’s ISIS-inspired events or radical Islamic terrorist events or whether it’s a mass murder or whether it’s a UnitedHealthcare CEO to an individual who just lost his,” explained Nicole Parker, former FBI Special Agent and Fox News contributor for Fox News Digital.
“With a lot of these events coming up, there’s just a lot of activity that’s going to happen with large gatherings, large groups of people.”
Parker’s warnings come after a man, identified as Shamsud-Din Jabbar, drove a truck into a crowd on Bourbon Street in New Orleans on New Year’s Day, killing more than a dozen people and injuring dozens more.
Matthew Livelsberger rented a Tesla Cybertruck in Denver, Colorado, which exploded in front of the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas on New Year’s Day. (Alcides Antunes/via REUTERS, left and Fox News, right.)
A few hours after that deadly attack, a Tesla Cybertruck was blown up in front Trump Hotel Las Vegas, inciting fear and chaos at the start of 2025.
Parker said that while these two events were shocking and devastating, our country is threatened with the beginning of terrorist attacks by Hamas against the Jewish state since the October 7, 2023 massacre.
“There’s been a lot of activity up to this point. I would say for our country, starting on October 7th, from a terrorism perspective, that’s when things definitely changed,” Parker said.
“I think there was a lot of activity going on in the Middle East. A lot of these terrorist groups that people thought were gone, which, frankly, they were. A lot of them were under the Trump administration. And then after the upheaval in the Middle East, I think almost restarted a lot of activity and chatter,” she continued.
WHO IS MATTHEW LIVELSBERGER? WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT THE SUSPECT FOR THE TESLA CYBERTRUCK EXPLOSION
“I think in the US, especially under the Biden administration, they’ve been so focused on domestic terrorism by domestic violent extremists, white supremacy, saying that’s the number one threat. There are a lot of activities. And as Christopher Wray said, alarms are going off.”
Parker said, unfortunately, after what we’ve seen happen in Las Vegas and New Orleans, it’s not a question of if, it’s just a question of when the next strike might come.
“We’re dealing with adversaries within our country. But in the next few weeks, the next few months, we’re going to have a lot of big, big events that are going to happen. And those are events where people are going to want to wreak havoc and hurt others, they’re doing it like to get attention, they want to cause as much destruction as possible,” Parker explained, noting the Super Bowl, the national championship in college football, which also falls. on the same day as Inauguration of President-elect Trump.
The FBI and Las Vegas police, along with other agencies, are continuing to investigate and determine what led a person of interest, 37-year-old Matthew Livelsberger, an active-duty U.S. Army Special Operations soldier from Colorado Springs, Colorado, to blow up a Cybertruck in front of of the Trump Las Vegas hotel on Tuesday morning.
INVESTIGATORS USE TATTOO, PHOTOS TO IDENTIFY SUSPECT BEHIND TRUMP HOTEL CYBERTRUCK EXPLOSION
Several guests who were staying at the hotel when it all happened described to Fox News Digital the chaos and disorder that ensued in the hours after the explosion.
“I had actually already taken my dogs out to use the bathroom, and then I went back to my hotel. I fed them and said, ‘okay, let’s go out.’ I just missed a guy at 8:48, I mean, I walk right through that door with my dogs several times a day,” Laurie Parent shared with Fox News Digital, narrowly missing the explosion.
“In the morning, when I woke up, you know, I heard something … it sounded like people cleaning the windows. And I heard a gunshot. And I said, ‘what the hell is that?’ And then all of a sudden I heard all these police sirens and everything so I looked out the window and saw smoke coming out of the window because we were in the corner of the room upstairs and on the 23rd floor,” Carlos Reyes said. like in a hotel.
1 dead, 7 injured after Tesla Cybertruck catches fire outside Trump Hotel in Las Vegas (Getty Images/ Alcides Antunes)
“It’s surreal. We (Chris and his wife) walked up here, and you can still see the (Cybertruck) on fire. There was a lot of smoke coming in…it was scary,” Chris Petrotta, a hotel guest who is celebrating his anniversary , described.
Parker reiterated that these attacks are important reminders to stay alert and aware of your surroundings and to contact the police if you see or hear anything suspicious.
“Don’t forget that the public is part of the solution because a lot of times when these individuals, whether they’re terrorists or thugs or mass shooters, there’s usually something called a leak, where they give some kind of indication that they’re going to do something before they actually do it. they do,” Parker said.
Parker said that while Americans shouldn’t live in fear, they should exercise common sense when at major events and even in everyday life.
“We can’t let violent criminals win, we can’t live in fear. But you also have to be aware of your surroundings and listen to your instincts. And unfortunately, I hate to say it, but this is not going to stop,” Parker said.
“It’s just the society we live in, unfortunately. And you have to take certain measures to mitigate the risk, obviously.”
Investigators are looking into the contents of a Tesla Cybertruck that exploded outside the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas on New Year’s Day. (Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Press Conference)
She added that while she’s excited, like many Americans, that Trump will soon take office, things won’t change overnight until real progress is made by elected officials and even within the FBI.
“Look, I love President Trump. But unfortunately, a lot of these things are going to happen under President Trump because these are people sitting here quietly. We never know when they’re going to implode. So all these people that came over the border, I don’t know when it’s going to work, just like 9/11. You don’t know the day it’s going to work, the day it’s going to decide when we’re going to do it,” Parker continued.
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP
The authorities are still there is working to determine the motive and investigate whether Livelsberger’s actions were an act of terrorism.
“We haven’t forgotten that it’s in front of the Trump building, that it’s a Tesla vehicle, but at this point we don’t have any information that definitively tells us or suggests that it was because of this particular ideology,” said Spencer Evans, the FBI’s lead agent in Las Vegas.
Stepheny Price is a writer for Fox News Digital and Fox Business. Tips and story ideas can be sent to stepheny.price@fox.com
