Masked man Elon Musk accused of being a ‘crazy stalker’ has been identified as an Uber Eats driver – who believes the multibillion-dollar space pioneer is the one terrorizing him.
Brandon Collado identified himself for the first time on Saturday in a response to Musk’s tweet sharing a clip of the driver being pulled over by his security in Los Angeles on Tuesday night, according to The Washington Post.
“I’m the guy in this video,” Collado reportedly wrote in response to the clip which Musk, 51, said showed his “crazy stalker” who had “climbed on [the] hood” of a car carrying “lil X”, his 2-year-old son, X Æ A-Xii.
But Collado then told Musk, “You have ties to me and have been stalking me and my family for over a year.”
This message did not appear to be online yet on Monday, and attempts to reach Collado were not immediately successful.
However, he confirmed to the DC Newspaper that he was the person in Musk’s video, which had been viewed nearly 18 million times on Monday – even sharing his own videos of the confrontation to prove it, the newspaper said.
In interviews, he “made several bizarre and unsubstantiated claims,” the Washington Post said, including that Musk was monitoring his location in real time — and controlling Uber Eats to prevent him from finding work.
He also claimed that Musk’s ex Grimes — the mother of two of his 10 children, including X Æ A-Xii — was sending him coded messages through his Instagram posts, the outlet said.
The incident with Musk’s security happened near the Los Angeles home of the goth singer, real name Claire Boucher, 34, and four years after she was granted a restraining order against a former stalker, noted the newspaper.
The Los Angeles police unit that investigates high-profile stalking cases has also confirmed it is investigating allegations from a person accused of stalking her, one of the detectives, Marc Madero, told the dc diary.
Officers investigated the video Musk tweeted to see if it was the same person, but haven’t reached any firm conclusions yet, Madero said.
Collado, meanwhile, claimed he innocently stopped at a gas station while making Uber Eats deliveries on Tuesday when Musk’s security confronted him for no reason, seemingly linking him to his alleged plot. which the second richest man in the world watched his exact whereabouts.
Musk’s video showed Collado wearing a mask, balaclava and glove, while driving a vehicle rented through car-sharing service Turo, the newspaper noted.
Collado’s own videos showed him exiting the rental and standing in front of a Toyota driven by Musk’s security guard, the newspaper noted.
He said South Pasadena cops arrived and questioned him, telling him they would file a report. The force had no comment to The Washington Post.
Gas station surveillance footage captured the interaction and passed it on to police, manager Daniel Santiago told the newspaper.
Madero, the detective, said it appeared the driver tried to conceal his identity by wearing gloves with his hand gripping the steering wheel of the rental vehicle and partially covering his face.
So far, he said, there was no direct evidence the man had used the @ElonJet page which tracked the tycoon’s flights.
Musk’s apparent stalker confrontation prompted him to suspend Jack Sweeney, the student behind the page, and the chief twit also changed the rules on pages sharing real-time information about people’s whereabouts.
Still, although he said there was so far no direct link between the confrontation and the controversial tracking site, Madero admitted it was a real possibility given the way the stalkers commonly use “targeted individual’s open source research”.
“Nothing would surprise me,” he told the Washington Post.
Musk – who was in Qatar on Sunday for the World Cup final – did not respond to requests for comment on the story, the newspaper said.
Uber did not immediately comment.
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