Police in Southern California said Tuesday that they were looking for more information about an incident last week that prompted Twitter CEO Elon Musk to crack down on accounts that track the whereabouts of private jets, including his.
Although authorities had previously said little about what happened, the Dec. 13 incident on a Los Angeles-area highway has become a flashpoint for a debate about online speech and the dissemination of personal information.
Police in South Pasadena said in a statement Tuesday that the incident involved a member of Musk’s security team, whose vehicle collided with the car of a man he claimed was following him.
The member of the security team was labelled a “suspect” by the police. They did not specify what crimes they suspected him of committing, but they did say they were looking into a report of “an assault with a deadly weapon involving a vehicle.”
Musk’s account of the incident differed. Musk said last week that a “stalker” had used location information from the account to follow and confront a car carrying one of his children, justifying his decision to ban the Twitter account @ElonJet, which publishes the location of his private plane.
However, there was no mention of a suspected stalker in the South Pasadena police statement.
“At no time during the incident did the victim identify the suspect or indicate the altercation was anything more than coincidental,” said police.
Linette Lopez, a Business Insider reporter who has covered Musk and Tesla for years, and ElonJet founder Jack Sweeney are among those who remain banned from Twitter.
A request for comment on the police statement was not immediately responded to by Twitter.
According to police, a 29-year-old Connecticut man pulled off a highway shortly before 10 p.m. to use his cellphone in a gas station. According to police, while parked, the man stated that another vehicle pulled directly in front of him, blocking his path.
The driver of the second vehicle, described by police as a member of Musk’s security team, then accused the Connecticut man of following him. According to them, each party recorded a video during the dispute.
According to police, as a member of Musk’s security team was leaving the parking lot, he struck the Connecticut man with his vehicle.
“When the officer arrived on the scene, the suspect had already left the area,” according to the statement.
According to the statement, detectives do not believe Musk was present during the confrontation.
According to the Washington Post, a person who identified himself as the driver in the video of the confrontation that Musk shared online expressed interest in Musk and the mother of two of his children, Claire Boucher, better known as the musician Grimes.
Boucher has previously been the victim of stalking and lives in the vicinity of the reported confrontation.
