The vehicles used in the New Year’s Day attack in New Orleans and an explosion in Las Vegas were both rented through the same car-sharing app, authorities said, a connection between two incidents that have been otherwise described as unrelated.
The vehicles — a Ford F-150 pickup truck that drove through a crowd of New Year’s revelers, killing at least 14 people, and a Tesla Cybertruck that erupted in flames outside a Donald Trump-owned hotel — had been rented by their respective drivers through Turo, a company that bills itself as the world’s largest car-sharing marketplace.
The company operates in a similar way to Airbnb, in that users rent cars directly from their owners. Renters can search for a specific car make and model from local owners, who set their own daily rates, and in many cases the renter can pick up a vehicle without any physical contact with the owner, according to the company’s website.
Anyone seeking to rent a car through Turo must have a valid driver’s license. The company may also check users’ credit score or auto insurance score and may conduct a criminal background check, the app’s website states.
The company was launched in 2010 and late last year reported having more than 350,000 vehicles actively available for rent and 3.5 million active users in more than 16,000 cities.
The Turo user who owns the truck used in the New Orleans attack told The New York Times that he recognized his vehicle while watching footage of the ramming incident, which killed and injured dozens along the city’s famous Bourbon Street. The owner, who declined to be identified publicly, said he had been renting five vehicles on Turo as a second income but that he planned to stop following the violence.
In a statement Wednesday, Turo said it is cooperating with law enforcement and that it doesn’t believe that either renter, in Las Vegas or New Orleans, had a criminal background that would have been flagged as a security threat. The company also said it was “not currently aware of any information that indicates the two incidents are related.”
Authorities have branded the New Orleans killings as a terrorist attack and said that the suspect fatally shot by police, 42-year-old Army veteran Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar, was inspired by the Islamic State extremist group and acted alone.
As of Thursday, officials have not determined a motive in the Cybertruck explosion. The truck was likely driven by 37-year-old Army Master Sgt. Matthew Livelsberger, who shot himself in the head before the truck blew up, police said.
President Joe Biden said Thursday that investigators “have not found any evidence” of a connection between the two events.
The Cybertruck had been rented by Livelsberger on Dec. 28 in Denver, before it was driven to Las Vegas, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department said at a press conference Thursday.
Livelsberger pulled up to President-elect Donald Trump’s Las Vegas hotel and shot himself, police said. Then the vehicle detonated, leaving seven people nearby with minor injuries. Police said a later search of the vehicle’s charred remains uncovered firework mortars and camping fuel canisters.
Those materials, found in the back of the truck, were likely meant to help fuel a greater explosion, but the explosives weren’t as sophisticated as authorities would have expected from Livelsberger, considering his military background, one federal law enforcement official said.
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Tesla CEO Elon Musk also said in a statement that his company confirmed that the blast was caused by the explosives and not by the vehicle itself.