A former FBI special agent is calling on Americans to use caution when attending major national events after two deadly incidents happened back-to-back on New Year’s Day.
“Sadly, we’re going to continue to see these types of events occurring, whether they are ISIS-inspired or radical Islamic terrorist events or if they’re mass shootings or if they’re the CEO of UnitedHealthcare individual that just has lost his mind,” Nicole Parker, former FBI special agent and Fox News Contributor explained to Fox News Digital.
“With a lot of these events coming up, there’s just a lot of activity that’s going to be happening with large gatherings, large groups of people.”
Parker’s warnings come after a man, identified as Shamsud-Din Jabbar, plowed a truck into a crowd on Bourbon Street in New Orleans on New Year’s Day, killing over a dozen people and injuring dozens.
Matthew Livelsberger rented a Tesla Cybertruck in Denver, Colorado, which blew up in front of the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas on New Year’s Day. (Alcides Antunes/via REUTERS, left and Fox News, right.)
Hours after that deadly attack, a Tesla Cybertruck was blown up in front of the Trump Hotel Las Vegas, prompting fear and chaos to begin 2025.
Parker said while these two events have been shocking and devastating, there has been a looming lead-up in our nation since the Oct. 7, 2023 massacre of the Hamas terror attacks on the Jewish State.
“There has been a lot of activity leading up to this moment. I would say for our country, beginning 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 it almost reignited a lot of activity and chatter,” she continued.
WHO IS MATTHEW LIVELSBERGER? WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT THE TESLA CYBERTRUCK EXPLOSION SUSPECT
“I think that in the US, especially under the Biden administration, they’ve been so focused on domestic terrorism of homegrown violent extremists, White supremacy, saying that that was the number one threat. There’s a lot of activity. And like Christopher Wray said, alarms are going off.”
Parker said, unfortunately, after what we have seen happen in Las Vegas and New Orleans, it’s not a matter of if, it’s just a matter of when the next strike could hit.
“We’re dealing with the adversaries within our country as well. But in the next few weeks, the next couple of months, we will have many big, large events that are going to be going down. And those are events where people that want to wreak havoc and hurt others, they do it to get attention. They want to cause the most destruction they possibly can,” Parker explained, highlighting the Super Bowl, College Football National Championship, which also falls on the same day as President-elect Trump’s inauguration.
The FBI and Las Vegas Police Department, along with other agencies, are continuing to investigate and determine what led the 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 the Trump Las Vegas hotel Tuesday morning.
INVESTIGATORS USE TATTOO, PHOTOS TO IDENTIFY SUSPECT BEHIND CYBERTRUCK EXPLOSION AT TRUMP HOTEL
Several guests who were staying at the hotel when everything unfolded described to Fox News Digital the chaos and mess that unfolded in the hours after the explosion.
“I actually had already taken my dogs out to go to the bathroom, and then I come back to my hotel. I fed them and I said, ‘okay, let’s go back outside.’ I just missed the guy. At 8:48, I mean, I walk right through that door with my dogs a couple of 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 were cleaning the windows. And I heard this popping sound. And I said, ‘what the heck is that?’ And then all of a sudden, I heard all these police sirens and everything. So I looked at the window and I saw smoke coming out of a window because we were on the corner room upstairs and 23rd floor,” Carlos Reyes recounted what it was like inside the hotel.
LAS VEGAS POLICE SAY CYBERTRUCK THAT EXPLODED AT TRUMP HOTEL HAD FUEL CONTAINERS, LARGE FIREWORK MORTARS
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 down here, and you can still see it (the Cybertruck) was on fire. A lot of smoke was going inside…it was scary,” Chris Petrotta, a hotel guest who was celebrating his anniversary, described.
Parker reiterated that these attacks are important reminders to stay vigilant and be aware of your surroundings and reach out to law enforcement if you see or hear something 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 violent offenders or mass shooters, usually there’s something called leakage, where they give some sort of indication that they’re going to do something before they actually do it,” Parker said.
Parker said while Americans should not live in fear, they should exercise common sense when at major events and even in everyday life.
“We cannot let violent criminals win, we cannot live in fear. But you also have to be aware of your surroundings and listen to your gut. And sadly, I hate to say this, but this is not going to stop,” Parker said.
“This is just the society that we live in, unfortunately. And you have to take certain measures in order to mitigate risk, obviously.”
Investigators are looking at the content inside a Tesla Cybertruck, which blew up in front of the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas on New Year’s Day. (Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Press Conference)
She added that while she is excited, like many Americans, for Trump to take office soon, things will not change overnight until real progress is made by elected officials and even inside the FBI.
“Look, I love President Trump. But sadly, a lot of these things are going to come to fruition under President Trump because these are people that are sitting here quietly. We never know when they’re going to implode. So all these people that came across the border, I don’t know when they’re going to act out, just like on 9/11. You don’t know the day that they’re going to be operating, the day that they are going to decide this is when we’re going to do it,” Parker continued.
Authorities are still working to determine a motive and investigate whether Livelsberger’s actions were an act of terrorism.
“It’s not lost on us that it’s in front of the Trump building, that it’s a Tesla vehicle, but we don’t have information at this point that definitively tells us or suggests it was because of this particular ideology,” said Spencer Evans, the Las Vegas FBI’s special agent in charge.
Stepheny Price is writer for Fox News Digital and Fox Business. Story tips and ideas can be sent to stepheny.price@fox.com
https://www.foxnews.com/us/former-fbi-special-agent-says-americans-must-stay-vigilant-following-las-vegas-new-orleans-attacks
