“I was going to shoot up Elon Musk and the plant,” suspect told police, adding he thought he was being tracked and surveilled by the Tesla CEO.
A 28-year-old Florida man was arrested in Austin the day before Tesla’s Cybertruck delivery event after allegedly planning to “shoot up Elon Musk and the plant,” according to the arrest affidavit.
Senior Manager of Security Operations with Tesla filed a Suspicious Activity report regarding threatening messages that were sent on Instagram on Nov. 9, according to the document.
The instagram messages included:
“I sure am crazy though”“But yeah so at the Tesla event I’m planning an attach so up to you guys to stop me”“I plan on killing people at that even ok November 30th and I would like you to do something about it so I don’t have to”“I wanna die”“I need to be stopped”“If I’m saying I’m gonna kill people then you should take this seriously”
The Travis County Sheriff’s Office launched an investigation after the senior manager filed the report two days before the event.
Apparently, the suspect planned to shoot Musk, believing he and Neuralink director Shivon Zilis were surveilling and tracking him.
From CBS Austin:
Investigators identified the Instagram user as Paul Ryan Overeem. Although he is from Florida, investigators pinged his cell phone on Wednesday and discovered that he was in Austin.
Believing he could potentially carry out his threats of a “mass casualty event,” SWAT officers found Overeem in a McDonald’s parking lot off Bee Cave Road and arrested him.
He told officers that he had weapons in his car and said he was planning on committing suicide before he could be arrested.
“I was going to shoot up Elon Musk and the plant,” he said.
After he was taken into custody, he admitted that he made multiple threats to harm Elon Musk and Shivon Zilis. He said he believed the two were watching him through camera systems and tracking him.
Overeem was charged with Terroristic Threat, a third-degree felony, and is in custody at the Travis County Jail on a $300,000 bond, according to online records.
This comes amid a political battle between Musk and corporate advertisers boycotting his social media platform X, alleging he was promoting “antisemitism” to proliferate.
“If someone’s going to try and blackmail me with advertising? Blackmail me with money? Go fuck yourself. Go. Fuck. Yourself. Is that clear? I hope it is,” Musk said at a New York Times summit last week.
BREAKING: Elon Musk to advertisers trying to blackmail 𝕏 into censorship: “Go f*ck yourself.” pic.twitter.com/cfH3ThOXNh
— ALX 🇺🇸 (@alx) November 29, 2023
Now it emerges that an unstable individual with paranoid delusions was allegedly planning to kill Musk.
Interesting.
