President Trump recently declared that vandalizing a Tesla store or vehicles would be considered an act of domestic terrorism, and at least one person in Las Vegas may be the first to test his words. A handful of Tesla cars were found on fire at a dealer in the city early Tuesday morning, and police said the person fired shots into other vehicles on the lot.
Assistant Sheriff Dori Koren said, “This was a targeted attack against a Tesla facility near Jones Boulevard and the 215 Beltway.” The store serves as a sales and service location, and film of the fire showed several vehicles ablaze, including Model 3s and Model Ys sitting on the front row of the parking lot.
The Las Vegas police and the local FBI bureau said they were both working to identify the suspect, but no names or descriptions have yet been released. Thankfully, no injuries were reported, but that might not matter when and if the person is identified and charged, given the heavy rhetoric coming out of Washington these days.
The news has been full of stories of individual vehicles being vandalized, but the larger-scale actions have been limited to other countries so far. This fire is an escalation of American Tesla protests, and it’s one that will almost certainly drive another round of threats from the president’s administration.
[Images: Tesla]
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