FBI investigating ‘terrorism-related’ event after driver rammed car into Nevada power substation
Police and the FBI are investigating after a car filled with weapons was rammed into a power substation near the Hoover Dam Thursday, in what has been described as a “terrorism-related event.”
It is the latest in a string of incidents targeting electric infrastructure in recent years but there is no ongoing threat to the public, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Sheriff Kevin McMahill said at a news conference Friday.
Police received a 911 call at 10 a.m. Thursday reporting a vehicle had crashed through a secured gate at the substation in Boulder City, located approximately 25 miles (40 kilometers) southeast of Las Vegas, McMahill said.
A witness called in the incident after seeing the car crash then hearing gunshots, according to the sheriff. The driver of the vehicle was 23-year-old Dawson Maloney of Albany, New York, police said.
Prior to the crash, Maloney had been reported missing. He died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, McMahill said.
Security video, shared by Vegas police, shows a vehicle speeding towards the facility, swerving past a gate, then driving through a chainlink fence.
Maloney’s vehicle, a rented Nissan Sentra, later crashed into large wooden bales of wire, police photos show. Fallen traffic cones were strewn across the substation in the wake of the incident.
The man communicated with family members before the crash, referencing self-harm, and said he was going to commit an act that would gain media attention. He referred to himself as a terrorist in a message sent to his mother, police said.
Authorities found explosive materials and multiple books “related to extremist ideologies” in Maloney’s hotel room, McMahill said. The books included ones about right- and left-wing extremism, environmental extremism, white supremacism and anti-government ideology, he said. Police photos also show multiple U.S. military weapons manuals recovered from his possessions.
“These findings significantly elevate the seriousness of this incident,” McMahill said during the press conference.
The official described the materials as a “smorgasbord of radical literature” and said law enforcement agencies are seeing a rise in individuals combining disparate extremist ideas.
“This is something that we have seen in the last couple of years that individuals will take very left-wing ideology, very right-wing ideology, combine it … and then they come up with their own, their own ideology,” he said.
Hotel guest Logan Stubbs said he saw Maloney before the crash.
“He had his hoodie up and just looked really sketchy,” Stubbs told ABC7. “There was just something off about him.”
