Las Vegas-area police and the FBI are investigating a car filled with weapons that rammed into a power substation near the Hoover Dam on Thursday as a “terrorism-related event,” the latest in a string of incidents targeting electric infrastructure in recent years.
There’s no ongoing threat to the public, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Sheriff Kevin McMahill said during a news conference Friday.
Police received a 911 call at 10 a.m. Thursday reporting a vehicle crash 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, he was 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.”
Maloney is listed as a student at Albany Law School in the class of 2027. He was also an honors student at New York’s Siena University.
“We are heartbroken to hear of the tragic passing of one of our law students, Dawson Maloney, in an off-campus incident,” Tom Torello, director of communications and marketing at Albany Law School, said in a statement.
Two shotguns, an assault rifle-style pistol, and flame throwers were found in his rental car, McMahill said. A police photo shows the weapons piled on top of each other near one of the car seats. About six shotgun shells can be seen nearby.
Maloney was wearing what police described as “soft-body armor” at the time of the crash.
Authorities recovered a 3D printer and several gun components needed to assemble a firearm from an Albany residence.
Officials have searched two Albany residences overall as part of their investigation.
Maloney had driven a rental car from Albany to Boulder City, according to Christopher Delzano, the FBI’s Las Vegas special agent-in-charge.
The New York man rented the car on February 12 and began driving across the country two days later.
Boulder City is home to the Hoover Dam, providing water to millions of people across Nevada, Arizona and California.
The power substation that was rammed is owned by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.
Boulder City Police Chief Timothy Shea said there was no evidence of major damage to critical infrastructure and no service disruptions as a result of the crash.
In 2023, a man rammed a car through a fence at a solar power facility in the desert northeast of Las Vegas, setting the car on fire. The solar power facility served Las Vegas Strip casinos. He was declared unfit for trial.
Electrical substations have also been targeted in Washington, Oregon and North Carolina.
“The risk is continued disruption of our economic system in our country — not only that, but there’s also lives at stake,” Jon Wellinghoff, a former chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, told The New York Times after the incident in North Carolina.
Extremists have targeted such infrastructure for a variety of reasons, according to experts, including “accelerationist” views that seek to hasten the collapse of society.
