A 28-year-old Florida man, Paul Ryan Overeem, was arrested last week for allegedly planning a “mass casualty event” during Tesla’s Cybertruck Delivery Event at Giga Texas. The event, attended by CEO Elon Musk, became the center of a potential tragedy that was narrowly averted.
Overeem, using the alias “ufotnoitalumis” on Instagram, posted a series of threats on November 9, explicitly targeting the Tesla Cybertruck event on November 30. In his messages, Overeem challenged authorities, stating it was “up to you guys to stop me,” expressing a disturbing intent to cause harm. The threats escalated with statements like “I plan on killing people at that event,” and “I wanna die.”
According to a report by the Austin American-Statesman, Tesla was notified of the threatening Instagram messages on November 10, although the report does not detail how Tesla became aware of the messages. Subsequently, law enforcement was alerted to the situation and the Travis County Sheriff’s Office launched an investigation, leading to the identification of Overeem as the individual behind the threats. Instagram cooperated with authorities, providing the phone number linked to the user “ufotnoitalumis,” leading them to Overeem’s location in Austin.
Overeem, who had driven from Florida to Texas, was arrested the day before the Cybertruck event on November 29 and is currently held in custody on a $300,000 bond. The charges against him include making terroristic threats, a third-degree felony. It was not disclosed whether Overeem had any weapons at the time of his arrest.
