Car-ramming incident at power substation near Las Vegas investigated as possible terrorism, police say

Police say they’re investigating a car that rammed into a power substation near Las Vegas, Nevada, on Thursday as a “terrorism-related event.” The driver was found dead at the scene from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, officials said.

There’s no ongoing threat to the public, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Sheriff Kevin McMahill said during a news conference Friday. The incident was reported Thursday morning at a power substation in Boulder City, a historic town located about 25 miles southeast of Las Vegas. 

Police have also released security video of the incident. Boulder City Police Chief Timothy Shea said there is no evidence of major damage to critical infrastructure and no service disruptions.

The driver of the Nissan Sentra was identified as 23-year-old Dawson Maloney from Albany, New York, who had been reported missing, McMahill said. Investigators say he drove cross-country ahead of the attack.

The man had communicated with family before the crash, referencing self-harm, and said he was going to commit an act that would place him on the news. He referred to himself as a terrorist in a message sent to his mother, according to police.

Two shotguns, an assault rifle-style pistol and flame throwers were found in his rental car, McMahill said, and he was wearing what police described as “soft-body armor.”

Evidence gathered at the scene led them to a nearby hotel room where they found explosive materials and multiple books “related to extremist ideologies,” McMahill said. The books included anti-government right-wing and left-wing extremist material, environmental extremism, white supremacy and anti-government ideology, he said.

“These findings significantly elevate the seriousness of this incident,” McMahill said.

McMahill described the written materials as a “smorgasbord of radical literature. … 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.

Authorities recovered a 3D printer and several gun components needed to assemble a firearm from an Albany residence.

Maloney is listed as a student at Albany Law School in the class of 2027. He was also an honors student for multiple semesters at Siena University, located in New York.

“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.  

Boulder City is home to the Hoover Dam, which is considered one of the country’s modern civil engineering wonders. The dam provides water to millions of people and generates an average of 4 billion kilowatt-hours of hydroelectric power each year for Nevada, Arizona and California.

The power substation that was rammed is owned by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. The facility works closely with Hoover Dam and transfers power to the Los Angeles basin, McMahill said. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power said in a statement to The Associated Press that it is aware of the incident, and there were no impacts or disruptions to its operations.

A similar incident occurred in 2023 when 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. That attack followed several incidents and arrests involving electrical substations in states including Washington, Oregon and North Carolina and concerns expressed by federal officials about the security of the nation’s electricity transmission network.

And in 2024, a Tennessee man with ties to white nationalist groups was arrested after federal prosecutors allege he tried to use what he thought was a drone packed with explosives to destroy a power station in Nashville.