Photo: Joe Raedle / Getty Images News / Getty Images
A 23-year-old man from Albany, New York, is dead after driving a rental car through the fence of a power substation just outside Boulder City, Nevada, in what authorities are investigating as a terrorism-related incident. The event, which unfolded Thursday (February 19), left investigators combing through a trove of weapons, explosive materials, and extremist literature.
Dawson Noah Maloney rented a car on February 12 and left Albany around Saturday (February 14), driving cross-country before crashing through a secured gate at a Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) facility near Boulder City at approximately 10 a.m. Thursday (February 19). Officers arriving at the scene found a broken perimeter fence, a debris field, and a silver Nissan Sentra with New York license plates resting against large industrial wire reels inside the facility. Maloney was found inside the vehicle with what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Sheriff Kevin McMahill confirmed Maloney's identity and cause of death at a news conference on Friday (February 20). McMahill said Maloney had communicated with family members before the crash, expressing thoughts of self-harm and stating he intended to commit an act that would put him "on the news." In a message to his mother, Maloney referred to himself as a "dead terrorist son," according to McMahill, and said he felt obligated to carry out the attack.
Authorities had recently received a missing persons report on Maloney out of New York prior to the incident.
Inside the rental vehicle, investigators found two shotguns, an AR-style pistol, numerous loaded AR magazines and shotgun shells, two devices described as flamethrowers containing thermite material, a crowbar, a hatchet, and a cellphone currently undergoing forensic analysis. Authorities also discovered thermite and ammonium nitrate among the explosive materials recovered from the vehicle. Maloney was wearing soft-body armor at the time of the crash.
Evidence recovered from Maloney's hotel room at the El Rancho Boulder Motel in Boulder City included multiple books tied to extremist ideologies — spanning right- and left-wing extremism, environmental extremism, white supremacy, and anti-government beliefs, McMahill said. The sheriff noted that Maloney's exact motive remained unclear, and that his ideology appeared to span extreme sides of the political spectrum.
FBI Special Agent in Charge Christopher Delzotto said two search warrants were executed at residences in Albany. Electronics recovered from one residence are being processed for evidence, while a second location yielded several firearm components and a 3D printer.
The LADWP facility, described as a power substation and transfer facility connected to a solar-power generation project, sustained no significant damage. Boulder City Police Chief Tim Shea confirmed there were no service disruptions as a result of the incident. The LADWP said it was aware of the situation but that operations were not affected.
McMahill acknowledged the ongoing challenge of securing power infrastructure. "We'll continue to look at how we target harden those locations," he said.
The FBI's offices in Nevada and New York are assisting the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, which is the lead agency in the ongoing investigation.