Police in Los Angeles haven’t uncovered any link between an incident that took place in the area last Tuesday in which a man characterized as a stalker confronted a member of Elon Musk’s security team and a Twitter account tracking the location of the billionaire’s jet. Elon claimed one of his children was in the car, which The Washington Post found no evidence to support in available footage from the scene.
Musk also alleged the man in the video jumped on the hood of the security team member’s car, an allegation for which it also doesn’t seem as though there’s any real-world evidence considering the Post — which conducted an interview with the man in the video — didn’t mention that claim. Musk has tied what happened to that Twitter account that tracked his private jet using data that available information indicates is generally publicly accessible. In the days following the confrontation, Twitter — which Elon now owns — temporarily suspended the accounts of several high-profile journalists who reported in some form on the account tracking his jet or the gas station encounter. As outlined in the Post, the gas station incident took place nearly a day after the Twitter profile posting tracking updates for Musk’s plane posted new location information, making a link difficult to believe.
“Police have said little about the incident but say they’ve yet to find a link between the confrontation and the jet-tracking account,” according to the Post’s report. On Thursday, the Los Angeles Police Department indicated officers were in touch with Musk’s team but added no crime reports had been filed with police. In communications with the Post, the man in the video from the gas station — who also publicly posted on Twitter that he was involved in the confrontation — indicated he was delivering for Uber Eats the evening the incident took place. Grimes, a musician with whom Musk has two children, lives in the general area of the gas station, and the individual who engaged with Musk’s security team member there revealed — through treating the claims as fact — that he suffers from delusions about the musical artist. He indicated, for instance, he believed Grimes was sending him covert messages through posts she made on Instagram.
A police detective who works with a Los Angeles unit that handles stalking cases indicated officers were looking into whether the man in footage from the gas station, whose name is Brandon Collado, was the same individual from a past case the unit investigated involving someone stalking Grimes. That detective added that his “unit had no evidence to suggest the man police were investigating had used the jet-tracking account,” per the Post. Although the precise manner in which Collado and the Musk security team member first connected is unclear, these details suggest the incident originated with circumstances that have nothing to do with the now suspended Twitter account that shared location data for Elon’s jet or with the journalists reporting on it. Police originally responded to the gas station incident that night, although officers made no arrests.
