Police provide first official details of Elon Musk’s alleged stalker incident

Twitter CEO Elon Musk tweeted last week that a "crazy stalker" followed a car carrying one of his children in Los Angeles last Tuesday night, "thinking it was me," and that the stalker blocked the car from moving and climbed onto its hood.

A new statement from local police provides the first official account of what happened during the incident. The South Pasadena police department has confirmed that an incident involving two vehicles was reported to the police on Tuesday night, but said that a member of Elon Musk's security team is currently a suspect in the investigation, not a victim.

A 29-year-old man from Connecticut told the South Pasadena police Tuesday that a driver in another vehicle had confronted him in a parking lot, accused him of following him on the 110 freeway, and then struck the man with his vehicle as he was leaving the parking lot.

Last Thursday, "South Pasadena Police learned the suspect involved in this case is believed to be a member of Elon Musk's security team," the department said in a statement.

A South Pasadena city spokesperson said the department is currently reaching out to Elon Musk's team seeking to investigate both sides of the incident and get statements from everyone involved. Detectives are reviewing video footage of the incident, the police department said.

Media spokespeople at Twitter and Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Washington Post reported on Sunday that it had identified the alleged stalker, who confirmed to the Post that he was the person in the video, and that he had reported what happened to the South Pasadena police.

The man said he was a delivery driver for UberEats, the Washington Post reported, and "made several bizarre and unsupported claims, including that he believed [Grimes] was sending him coded messages through her Instagram posts; that Musk was monitoring his real-time location; and that Musk could control Uber Eats to block him from receiving a delivery order."

Grimes, whose real name is Claire Boucher, lives in a house near the gas station where the altercation occurred, the Post reported. The Guardian was not immediately able to reach the man named in the Washington Post story for comment.

The man who made the police report in South Pasadena is not being named because it's "an ongoing investigation," a city spokesperson said.

At 9:51pm on 13 December, according to a police department press release, South Pasadena police responded to a report of an assault with a deadly weapon involving a vehicle on Mission Street.

A 29-year-old man from Connecticut told police that he had recently exited the 110 freeway, and had stopped to use his phone in a parking lot. While he was parked, the man said, another vehicle pulled in front of him, blocking his path, and the driver approached him, "accusing him of following him on the freeway."

The victim and the driver who confronted him both took video of their dispute, police said. When the suspect was leaving the parking lot, "he struck the victim with his vehicle."

When an officer arrived at the scene, the suspect had already left the area, police said. The Connecticut man did not "identify the suspect or indicate altercation was anything more than coincidental," police said.

Musk tweeted that his child was in a car that was followed by a "stalker." Authorities said Musk was not present, and it was not yet clear if members of his family had been.

Musk cited the interaction between his child and a "stalker" as a justification for a number of sweeping policy changes at Twitter last week, including removing an account that shared public information about his private jet, barring accounts from sharing real-time location information, and suspending the accounts of several prominent US journalists who had reported on his actions. Musk later reversed the bans on some of the journalists after multiple public Twitter polls of users said they should be reinstated.

The Los Angeles Police Department said last Friday that the department was aware of Musk's tweet about the stalker, "and is in contact with his representatives and security team," but that "no crime reports have been filed yet."

The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department said last week that it had not received any reports about the incident.

Johana Bhuiyan contributed reporting.