Investigators look over the scene at a Tesla Collision Middle after a person used incendiary gadgets to set a number of autos on fireplace on March 18, 2025 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Ethan Miller | Getty Pictures
A Las Vegas man has been arrested on prices associated to the Molotov cocktail arson assault on Tesla autos in that metropolis in mid-March, authorities mentioned Thursday.
The incident was one of many highest-profile acts of vandalism in a sequence of assaults on Tesla areas across the nation associated to firm CEO Elon Musk’s function within the Trump administration heading DOGE, the hassle to slash federal spending and worker headcount.
The FBI has referred to as these incidents “home terrorism” and launched a job power to handle the assaults.
Paul Hyon Kim, 36, faces state and federal prices for the assault at Tesla Collision on West Badura Avenue in Las Vegas at 2:45 a.m. on March 18.
Police show pictures of Paul Hyon Kim on a tv display screen throughout a press convention on Thursday, March 27, 2025, at Metro Police Headquarters. Kim, 36, was arrested in reference to the fires set at a Tesla service middle the week prior. (Bizuayehu Tesfaye/Las Vegas Overview-Journal/Tribune Information Service by way of Getty Pictures)
Bizuayehu Tesfaye | Las Vegas Overview-Journal | Tribune Information Service | Getty Pictures
5 Teslas had been broken from Molotov cocktails and or bullets fired at them, in line with a felony grievance.
Kim was arrested in reference to the Las Vegas incident on Wednesday, two days after a police bomb squad discovered a number of incendiary gadgets at a Tesla showroom in Austin, Texas. Federal authorities mentioned Kim had a flight booked for Thursday out of Las Vegas to Milwaukee.
Authorities recognized Kim because the suspect within the Las Vegas assault from surveillance video of a Hyundai car that was seen leaving close to the scene of the incident, in addition to different proof, together with bullet fragments, and cellular phone tower data and the grievance mentioned.
The grievance mentioned that lower than three hours after the assault, at 5:30 a.m., Kim filed an insurance coverage declare that mentioned the tires of his personal automobile had been slashed, and that his automobile had been stolen after which recovered.
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However a question of native police stories didn’t present that Kim had notified police that his automobile had been stolen or recovered, the grievance mentioned.
A search of Kim’s residence discovered a black backpack with pink paint, a black hoodie, face masks, ammunition, holsters, gun components, an AR-style rifle, an AK-style rifle, and a handgun, the grievance mentioned.
Police show pictures of weapons they are saying they discovered at Paul Hyon Kim’s condo on a tv display screen throughout a press convention on Thursday, March 27, 2025, at Metro Police Headquarters.
Bizuayehu Tesfaye | Las Vegas Overview-Journal | Tribune Information Service | Getty Pictures
Additionally discovered was “paper with what’s believed to be a handwritten egress route from Tesla on Badura.”
Federal prosecutors in Las Vegas have charged Kim with illegal possession of an unregistered firearm and arson.
There have been at the very least 80 reported instances of vandalism or arson of Tesla autos in america and Canada.
Musk in a tweet responding to information of Kim’s arrest wrote, “Legacy media propaganda is what satisfied this man to do it. Similar media that satisfied assassins to focus on the President.”
