A man is dead after trying to crash his vehicle into a Los Angeles Department of Water and Power substation not far from the Hoover Dam this week, authorities said, in what they alleged was an attempted terrorist attack.

Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Sheriff Kevin McMahill identified the suspect as 23-year-old Dawson Noah Maloney of Albany, New York, where he had recently been reported missing.

McMahill said Maloney fatally shot himself in the head after crashing his vehicle into industrial wire reels Thursday morning. It was not immediately clear how close the vehicle got to power lines and generators at the substation, which is outside Boulder City, Nevada.

McMahill said there was no threat to the public and no major damage to the substation, which transfers power from the Hoover Dam to Los Angeles.

An LADWP spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday. McMahill said he did know why the suspect had targeted the facility, or whether he had been in the area before.

McMahill said the suspect had been in communication with family members before the incident and made several comments "referencing self-harm and alluding to committing an act that would place him 'on the news.'"

"In a message to his mother, the suspect referred to himself as a 'dead terrorist son,'" McMahill said, "and stated he felt he had to carry out his act."

McMahill said the attempted attack occurred at 10 a.m. Thursday, when the Boulder City Police Department received a report about a vehicle crashing through a security gate at the power substation.

"The caller indicated that the driver appeared deceased and that gunshots had been heard after the crash," McMahill said, adding that officers responded to the location shortly after.

During a news conference Friday, McMahill played two separate videos showing a four-door sedan driving through a chain-link fence surrounding the facility. He said his department's counter-terrorism team responded to the location at 1 p.m. Thursday to assist local authorities.

Upon arriving, he said officers noticed damage to the chain-link fence and debris leading to a dark gray Nissan Sentra with New York license plates. In the driver's seat, they found a dead man wearing soft-body armor.

McMahill said investigators found several firearms — including a shotgun and an AR-style pistol — in the vehicle, as well as two devices he described as flamethrowers. He said a crowbar and a hatchet were also recovered.

The incident is being investigated as a terrorism-related event, McMahill said.

FBI officials, who are leading the investigation, believe the suspect rented a car in Albany and drove to Nevada on Feb. 14. He checked into a room at El Rancho Boulder Motel, more than 15 miles north of the substation.

McMahill said evidence collected at the hotel included "books related to extremist ideology, including right- and left-wing extremism, environmental extremism, white supremacy and anti-government ideology."

Investigators also recovered materials including metal pipes and gasoline that could be used to make explosives.

McMahill brought up the attempted attack during an address Friday morning as he discussed past counter-terrorism incidents in Las Vegas, including an explosion outside the Trump International Hotel in January 2025 and the discovery of a biolab in a home earlier this month.

During Friday's news conference, McMahill was asked about the suspect's motive.

"We're going through all the computers and documents, you saw this smorgasbord of radical literature that is there," he said. "This is something we have seen in the last couple of years that individuals will take very left-wing ideology, very right-wing ideology, combine it with the occult and a number of different types of things and they come up with their own ideology, so we really don't know here what has caused this extremism."

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