Irvine police have made an arrest in a vandalism spree that left more than a dozen Tesla owners with a nasty surprise on their vehicles. Max Sebastian Solomon, 25, of Irvine, was taken into custody and booked into Orange County Jail on felony vandalism charges after detectives connected him to the string of incidents at a shopping plaza near the LA Fitness on Michelson Drive.
The case began with a rash of spray-painted Teslas over about a week. According to the Irvine Police Department, surveillance video from around 10:30 p.m. showed a man inside a parking garage shaking a can of spray paint, pulling his shirt over his mouth, and marking a Tesla in red paint with the word “Nazi.” That night alone, four Teslas were damaged. Less than a week later, a similar incident happened at a different parking garage in the same plaza, where nine more Teslas were vandalized with the words “Nazi” and “Fascist,” reported ABC 7 Eyewitness News.
What makes this one interesting from an investigative standpoint is how it all came together. Detectives didn’t crack the case through the spray paint incidents themselves. Instead, they tied Solomon to an earlier, seemingly unrelated altercation where a man spat on a Tesla stopped at an intersection. The connection? A takeout order the suspect happened to be carrying at the time. If you have ever wondered whether keeping a receipt could actually matter one day, here is your answer. It usually doesn’t, until it does.
For the Tesla owners caught in the middle of this, it was a frustrating and unwelcome experience, regardless of what anyone thinks about the brand or its CEO. One victim told ABC7 the damage kept him off the road for several days until he found someone who could remove the paint, and that the person did the work for free because they were offended by what had happened.
A car is a car, and most people just want to drive it without becoming an unwilling participant in someone else’s statement.
How Detectives Cracked the Case
Vandalism cases involving multiple vehicles across separate incidents can be tricky to solve, especially when the suspect is careful enough to cover his face on camera. Irvine PD noted early on that they believed the same man was behind both incidents based on matching shoes and a tattoo near his right elbow.
That was enough to keep the investigation moving, but it took linking the spitting incident, and the food order in the suspect’s hand, to actually put a name to the case. Sometimes it is not the big flashy clue that closes a case. It is the small, mundane detail nobody thinks to hide.
Thirteen Cars, One Plaza
It is worth sitting with the scale of this for a second. Thirteen Teslas, at the same plaza, in the span of about a week. That is not a spur of the moment decision made in the heat of a single bad moment. That is someone returning to the same spot more than once with paint already in hand.
For owners parked in that garage, it turned an ordinary trip to the gym into a game of automotive Russian roulette they never signed up for.
Our Take
However anyone feels about a particular car brand or its politics, keying, spray-painting, or spitting on someone else’s property crosses a pretty clear line. It is somebody’s ride, often financed for the next several years, and it becomes the target of a message that has nothing to do with the person who actually has to drive it, clean it, and pay to fix it.
We are glad detectives were resourceful enough to close this one out, takeout order and all. It is also a decent reminder that surveillance cameras are everywhere these days, so if vandalism is on your mind for any reason, maybe reconsider the whole plan.