A teenager has been charged with torching two Cybertrucks in an attack on a Tesla dealership in Missouri, federal prosecutors said.
Owen McIntire, 19, faces unlawful possession of an unregistered destructive device and one count of malicious damage by fire over the March 17 attack in Kansas City.
McIntire allegedly donned a large, floppy sun hat as a disguise and made his way to the KC Tesla Center, where prosecutors say he used Molotov cocktails to torch two Cybertrucks with sale prices of $105,485 and $107,485. The resulting fire also damaged two charging stations.
"Let me be extremely clear to anyone who still wants to firebomb a Tesla property: you will not evade us," said Attorney General Pam Bondi in a related release. "You will be arrested. You will be prosecuted. You will spend decades behind bars. It is not worth it."
McIntire was attending college in Boston at the time of his arrest. According to the arrest affidavit, following the attack, police and ATF agents canvassed the area looking for witnesses and video evidence leading up to the attack.
The document states that police obtained video from a residence about a block away from the KC Tesla Center. Images showed a white crossover vehicle parked outside the residence the night of the incident.
A person got out of the vehicle, accessed the passenger's side of the vehicle, donned the white sun hat, and proceeded on foot. Police were able to get the license plate of the car, which was registered to McIntire. Images from security cameras seemed to show a person wearing similar clothes and hat, at the KC Tesla Center at the time of the arson attack.
Other images show the person walking toward the center.
Police also were able to recover the discarded sun hat in the aftermath of the attack.
"Crimes have consequences. The people behind these violent and dangerous attacks on private property will face decades in prison — we will not make deals and we will not negotiate," said Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.
President Donald Trump weighed in on the matter as attacks soared in March, saying he is looking forward to "watching the sick terrorist thugs get 20 year jail sentences for what they are doing to Elon Musk and Tesla."
"Perhaps they could serve them in the prisons of El Salvador, which have become so recently famous for such lovely conditions!" Trump added, in reference to the decision to send Venezuelan deportees to the Central American country's infamous CECOT prison, where lights stay on all day and inmates are only allowed out of their cells 30 minutes a day to exercise in the hallways.
Originally published on Lawyer Herald
