A man enrolled at a Boston college was charged in connection with two Cybertrucks at a Tesla center in Kansas City, United States Attorney Leah Foley’s office said.
Owen McIntire, 19, of Kansas City, was charged with one count of unlawful possession of an unregistered destructive device and one count of malicious damage by fire of any property used in interstate commerce.
“Let me be extremely clear to anyone who still wants to firebomb a Tesla property: you will not evade us,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement from Foley’s office. “You will be arrested. You will be prosecuted. You will spend decades behind bars. It is not worth it.”
At around 11:16 p.m. on March 17, a Kansas City police officer in the area of the Kansas City Tesla Center saw smoke coming from a Cybertruck in the center’s parking lot, Foley’s office said.
The officer approached and saw an “unbroken suspected incendiary device,” determined to be a Molotov cocktail, near the Cybertruck, Foley’s office said. The fire spread from one Cybertruck to another in the lot.
After Kansas City firefighters arrived at the scene, they extinguished the fire, the statement read.
Through an investigation by forensics experts, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and local law enforcement, “we now have a suspect in custody,” Acting Director Dan Driscoll of the ATF said in Foley’s statement.
This is the second time that federal agents have arrested a person in connection with a fire at a Tesla center, FBI Director Kash Patel said in the statement.
An Albuquerque man was charged in connection with a fire at a Tesla showroom and the Republican Party of New Mexico headquarters in Albuquerque, according to the Department of Justice in a statement on Monday.