US man sues dealer after his plumbing truck is seen being used by jihadists to fight in Syria

Mark Oberholtzer, owner of Mark-1 Plumbing in
Texas City, left the 'Mark-1 plumbing' stickers on
the truck when he traded it in for a newer Ford
pickup at AutoNation Ford Gulf Freeway in
October 2013. A year later, a photo posted on
Twitter by the extremist Ansar al-Deen Front from
the front lines of the war in Syria showed his
truck - stickers and all - being used by jihadis.
Oberholtzer, who says he has received death
threats, is now seeking more than $1million in
punitive damages from AutoNation Ford Gulf
Freeway for fraud, gross negligence, negligent
misrepresentation, defamation, invasion of privacy
and deceptive trade, according to Courthouse
News.
At the time he turned his truck into the dealer, he
started peeling the stickers off his truck, but a
salesman stopped him, telling him it ‘would
blemish the vehicle paint’ and ‘the dealership had
something better for removal’, Oberholtzer said in
a lawsuit in Harris County Court.
On December 17, 2014, Oberholtzer’s secretary
called him to let him know that a member of the
jihadi group Ansar al-Deen tweeted a ‘propaganda
photograph’ with a message reading: ‘using
plumbing truck against regime in #Aleppo’.
‘By the end of the day, Mark-1's office, Mark-1's
business phone, and Mark's personal cellphone
had received over 1,000 phone calls from the
around the nation. These phone calls were in
large part harassing and contained countless
threats of violence, property harm, injury and even
death,’ Oberholtzer’s complaint said.
The plumber said his secretary was too scared to
go to the office and that he was afraid for
himself and his family, so he traveled to
McCallen to escape the backlash.
After the photo and video went viral, ‘USA Today,
CBS, NBC and Inside Edition’ requested interviews
and the FBI and Department of Homeland
Security stopped by to tell him ‘there are crazy
people out there’ and that he should ‘protect
himself’.
Oberholtzer’s complaint also mentions The
Colbert Report’s final episode, which ‘began with
the segment “Texan’s Truck in Syria”,’ which
featured his truck and was the ‘most watched
episode ever in the show’s history’.
A year later, Oberholtzer said he still gets
threatening phone calls ‘whenever ISIS commits
an atrocity that is reported nationally’.
Culled from UK Daily Mail