After a Tesla crashed into a TikToker’s house, an aggressive tow truck crew tried to quickly whisk the car before police could arrive, comedian Grant Lyon, who goes by @GrantsGameRecs, said in a pair of videos posted over the past few weeks.
When he tried to stop the tow truck drivers, Lyon claims they threatened to beat him up and kill him. In his first video, he posited an elaborate Tesla-tow truck collusion conspiracy. Viewers, though, have a slightly more plausible idea.
The first video was posted on May 22 with the caption “I definitely don’t trust Tesla these days.”
“Here’s a conspiracy theory I think might be true,” Lyon said in the video, before launching into an explanation about how, a week ago, a Tesla slammed into the side of his house.
After checking that his roommate was okay, Lyon called 911 then went outside to take pictures of the accident. The first picture he took was at 5:07pm, he said. The tow truck showed up three minutes later.
“I was like hey, can we pause for a second? Like the cops are on their way right now,” Lyon said he asked the tow truck driver.
“Fuck you,” the tow truck driver replied.
“What, are you kidding me dude?” Lyon said. “My house just got run into, have some empathy.”
“Here’s your empathy,” the tow truck driver answered, flipping Lyon off. Then, Lyon says, the tow truck driver told him to “get the fuck out of my way,” shoved him, and threatened to beat him up and kill him if he didn’t get out of his way and let him take the car.
The weird interaction led Lyon to speculate that Tesla’s automatic crash system was alerting tow truck drivers to get to Teslas that had crashed quickly before any news cameras showed up.
“Because those tow truck drivers were here so fast and they were so aggressive, there had to be a bunch of money on the line,” Lyon theorized.
In a follow-up video posted on Monday where Lyon answered some of the questions he’d been getting about the incident, some commenters proposed alternative explanations.
One commenter who Lyon highlighted claimed that there are “rogue tow truck drivers” who listen to police scanners to try to get to crashes before the police show up.
“They take the car to a shady body shop who pays them a percentage of the repair bill / insurance payment,” the commenter claimed. If the owner of the car tries to take it out early they hit them with thousands of dollars of fees before releasing it, the commenter added. “It’s a total scam, a racket, and nearly impossible to enforce under the current laws.”
Lyon did note the driver gave the tow truck permission to take his car.
According to Lyon, the driver of the Tesla was shaken up, but they exchanged insurance information. Since then he’s been trying to get camera footage from the car which might show what happened.
“He said he swerved to avoid another car and then lost control of his car,” Lyon said the driver told him.
Lyon also said that while many people have encouraged him to sue the tow truck company and press charges against them for assault, most lawyers have told him it would be a long process without much accountability.
He also said that lawyers he’s talked with aren’t interested in the damage to the house either because it’s a property damage case, and not one where there are any injured people.
“If you know a lawyer that would be interested, have them reach out to me,” he said.
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