When a Texas man returned to his parking spot at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport in March 2025, he found a deep scratch running the full length of his Tesla Model X. What made it worse: his car had already caught the whole thing on camera. Tesla’s built-in Sentry Mode recorded a man walking past with a key fob in hand, dragging it deliberately along the side panel. The owner posted the footage online hoping someone could identify the suspect. It went viral almost instantly, and the story is making the rounds again because the civil lawsuit that followed is still one of the more interesting legal responses to come out of the wave of Tesla vandalism that swept the country last year.
The owner, who remained anonymous in court filings due to safety concerns, hired Dallas attorney Majed Nachawati of the Nachawati Legal Group. They filed a civil suit seeking $1 million in damages. Nachawati was upfront about the math not adding up on paper. The repair costs on a Model X don’t come close to seven figures. That’s the point. The owner bought the car in 2022, well before Elon Musk’s political profile became what it is today, and his attorney made clear this lawsuit isn’t a political statement. His client bought the car because he liked it. Someone scratched it. Now there’s a lawsuit.
The Camera Did the Heavy Lifting
The Sentry Mode footage was clear enough to go viral, credible enough to support an arrest, and detailed enough to anchor a civil claim. Donald Trump Jr. reposted an image of the suspect’s face, and according to the lawsuit, that amplification helped lead to the identification.
DFW Airport Police arrested Rafael Hernandez, a 56-year-old Frisco resident, on March 22 and charged him with criminal mischief causing a pecuniary loss of $2,500 to $30,000, a state jail felony in Texas carrying up to two years and a $10,000 fine. He is also named as the defendant in the civil suit.
Why $1 Million for a Keyed Car
The suit cites property damage, lost wages, emotional distress, and attorney fees.
Nachawati described it as potentially one of the first civil actions filed specifically in connection with the broader Tesla vandalism trend that emerged in early 2025, when reports of keyed paint, slashed tires, broken windows, and worse became a regular news item across the country.
A Year Later, Still Circulating
The fact that this story is still getting traction more than a year after it happened says something. For Tesla owners who purchased their vehicles long before any of this became a flashpoint, the case resonates. For anyone who has ever come back to a parking garage to find their car damaged, it resonates for different reasons entirely.
The camera caught it. The internet identified him. The attorney filed the suit. Whether the million-dollar number ever appears on a check is almost secondary at this point.