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LOS ANGELES — A confrontation between a member of Elon Musk’s security team and an alleged stalker, whom Musk attributed to a Twitter account who was tracking his jet, took place at a gas station 26 miles from Los Angeles International Airport and 23 hours after the @ElonJet Account instead of last tracked down the whereabouts of the jet.
The timing and location of the confrontation cast doubt on Musk’s claim that the account had published real-time “assassination coordinates” that threatened his family and led to the confrontation. Police have said little about the incident but say they have yet to find a link between the confrontation and the jet-tracking account.
Last week’s incident prompted a sweeping rewrite of the Twitter Rules and the suspension of half a dozen journalist accounts condemned by free speech advocates. It also underscored how Musk’s personal concerns can affect his stewardship of a social media platform used by hundreds of millions of people around the world.
As the sole owner of Twitter, Musk can dictate the policies as he pleases. Musk dissolved Twitter’s board of directors, which at other companies may have influenced the company’s response to the incident, as well as its longtime “trust and safety committee,” which had advised the social media platform on its policies. No Twitter executive has the stature to balance Musk’s directives.
The incident, according to the Washington Post’s coverage, took place around 9:45 p.m. Tuesday in South Pasadena, a suburb of Los Angeles. The South Pasadena Police Department has not responded to requests for comment.
The Los Angeles Police Department said in a statement Thursday that its Threat Management Unit is in contact with Musk’s representatives and the security team, but that no crime reports have been filed. Police did not respond to requests for updates on Sunday.
Using a video of the incident Musk posted to Twitter, The Post identified the owner of the affected car and then the driver featured in the video, who rented it through the Turo car-sharing service.
The car’s renter, Brandon Collado, confirmed in interviews with The Post that he was the person featured in the video. He also provided The Post with videos he took of Musk’s security guard that matched those Musk posted on Twitter.
In his conversations with The Post, Collado admitted he’s interested in Musk and the mother of two of Musk’s children, the musician named Grimes, whose real name is Claire Elise Boucher. Boucher lives in a house near the gas station.
In his communications with The Post, Collado, who said he is a driver for Uber Eats, also made several bizarre and unsubstantiated claims, including that he believed Boucher was sending him encrypted messages through her Instagram posts; that Musk was monitoring his location in real time; and that Musk could control Uber Eats to prevent him from receiving delivery orders. He said he was in Boucher’s neighborhood to work for Uber Eats.
Musk did not respond to email and tweet requests from The Post to discuss the incident. Boucher did not respond to requests for comment.
Due to the concentration of high profile personalities, stalking is a pervasive problem in Los Angeles. After 21-year-old actress Rebecca Schaeffer was shot dead by an obsessive fan at the entrance to her Los Angeles home in 1989, the city took several measures to protect against stalking targets, such as: B. Restrictions on Public Access to Address Data California driving records and a specialized law enforcement unit focused on the issue.
However, in 2015, actress and singer Selena Gomez was forced to move out of her $4.5 million home due to a relentless stalker. Actress Sandra Bullock recently spoke about the trauma and PTSD she experienced after a stalker broke into her home in 2014. In 2012, a man accused of stalking actress Halle Berry was sentenced to over a year in prison.
Boucher was also a victim of stalking. In 2018, she was granted a restraining order against a man named Raymond Barrajas after he showed up at her home and said he believed she was secretly communicating with him through her music.
Marc Madero, a Los Angeles police officer with the unit that investigates high-profile stalking cases, told The Post the unit was investigating a man accused of stalking Boucher. After the confrontation at the gas station, Musk’s security team alerted police, who began investigating whether the man in the video was the same alleged stalker, Madero said. He said the unit has yet to make a decision and is continuing to investigate.
Madero said video of the man suggested he had made efforts to hide his identity, including wearing gloves and partially covering his face. But he said his unit had no evidence the man the police were investigating used the jet-tracking account. Noting that stalkers often use “open source searches for a target,” he added, “Nothing would surprise me.”
Musk tweeted Thursday that journalists “were aware of the violent stalker and yet doxed my family’s real-time location.” He did not say which journalists he was referring to or provide any evidence. The Post was unaware of the incident until Musk tweeted about it. A check of the internet found no news accounts about a stalker. A volunteer from the investigative journalist group Bellingcat used the video Musk posted in locate the incident to the gas station.
Musk’s jet landed in Los Angeles last Monday, December 12, after a flight from Oakland, the @ElonJet account said, citing flight information known as ADS-B data, which is legally and routinely collected by aviation hobbyists and be published on public websites such as ADS-B Exchange.
Musk had been in San Francisco the night before and was booed onstage at Dave Chappelle’s comedy show. He had posted another three days earlier photo of San Francisco by his 2-year-old son X Æ A-Xii, whom Musk refers to as “X”.
The incident happened at the gas station on Tuesday, December 13, about 15 minutes before the gas station closed, according to manager Daniel Santiago, who was working that night. Santiago said he was surprised when the car Collado was driving pulled into the Arco station and into the space next to Santiago’s car, which is not a normal place for a customer to park.
He said the incident was caught on the gas station’s security camera and the footage was turned over to South Pasadena police on Thursday.
According to video of the incident Musk posted, the member of Musk’s security team confronted Collado, who was in the car wearing gloves and a hood. “Yeah, pretty sure. Got it,” the Musk security team member heard in the video.
What happened between the two men before they arrived at the gas station is unknown. In the videos shared with The Post, there is no indication that Musk’s children were present.
Collado claimed he was delivering Uber Eats and visiting a friend when he pulled into the gas station, and said Musk’s security guard then confronted him for no reason. Collado said he believes Musk was monitoring his real-time location.
Two videos of the altercation Collado shared with The Post show him getting out of his rental car and standing in front of a Toyota being driven by Musk’s security guards.
Shortly after the incident, officers from the South Pasadena Police Department arrived at the gas station, questioned Collado and told him they would file a complaint, Collado said.
On Saturday, Collado Musk tweeted, “I’m the guy in this video…You have ties to me and have been following me and my family for over a year.” Collado said he has not been contacted by police since Tuesday night.
After the gas station incident, Twitter changed its rules to prohibit the sharing of any “live location information,” including links to other websites that “posted itineraries, actual physical location, or other identifying information that would reveal an individual’s location, regardless.” of which this information is publicly available.”
It also blocked @ElonJet, its operator Jack Sweeney, and dozens of its other jet-tracking accounts that monitored the public movements of sports teams, political figures, and Russian oligarchs.
Twitter also suspended journalists from The Post, New York Times, CNN and other news organizations who covered @ElonJet’s suspensions. Two former employees who have been in contact with Twitter employees told the Post that the suspensions were once labeled as “direction of Elon.”
Musk officials have previously asked the Federal Aviation Administration to limit the sharing of certain flight records through a program called “Limiting Aircraft Data Displayed.” However, such requests do not prevent the transmission of ADS-B data derived from unencrypted signals broadcast by the aircraft and which anyone with the appropriate equipment can receive from the ground.
Musk released videos on Sunday showing him attending the World Cup match in Qatar. When some in the stands showed photos Musk was present, Twitter users noted that the details could be classified as real-time location information, like the kind Musk had described as “assassination coordinates,” and were no longer allowed.
Alice Crites contributed to this report.