A 19-year-old University of Massachusetts Boston student was busted for the crazed firebombing of a Tesla dealership in Missouri, according to federal officials.
Owen McIntire, 19, was back in his hometown of Parkville, Mo., for spring break on March 17, when he drove to a Tesla dealership in nearby Kansas City and hurled two Molotov cocktails at a Cybertruck, causing a fire and thousands of dollars in damage after the blaze spread to a second Cybertruck, the Justice Department said Friday.
In the alleged arson attack, McIntire allegedly concocted two homemade incendiary devices and used them to destroy the pair of Cybertrucks, which cost $105,485 and $107,495, the Justice Department alleged.
Only one of those bottle bombs exploded, and investigators were able to recover the second completely intact, the statement said. It appeared to be an apple cider vinegar bottle, according to photos from the scene.
Two Tesla charging stations, which cost $550 each, were also damaged in the blaze, feds said.
McIntire is 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, the DOJ said.
“Let me be extremely clear to anyone who still wants to firebomb a Tesla property: you will not evade us,” US Attorney General Pam Bondi warned in the DOJ statement.
“You will be arrested. You will be prosecuted. You will spend decades behind bars. It is not worth it.”
The FBI orchestrated the arrest and celebrated the crackdown on extremists targeting the electric car company owned by Elon Musk, who oversees the Trump administration’s cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
“This is the second arrest this week of a suspect charged with targeting Tesla, more proof that the FBI will not stand for these destructive acts,” FBI Director Kash Patel said on X.
“These actions are dangerous, they are illegal, and we are going to arrest those responsible,” Patel added.
On a social media account believed to be McEntire’s, he wrote a lengthy diatribe about the state of the world and his mental health in March 2023.
“I am having a panic attack right now and have a painful urge to scream at the world right now and I love it all,” he wrote.
“I don’t know how to think I can’t think about it every time I look at the news it’s something new and awful and this goddammed school bill has broken me and the labor laws and the cop city and project willow and roe v wade and I just need to spill out here so I don’t go insane with rage and fear I need to know someone sees this everything that is happening,” he said.
McIntire’s parents both work professionally as musicians, according to public records.
UMass Boston and the McIntires did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
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