A Texas Plumber Sees His Old Truck On Social Media, In The Hands Of Syrian Terrorists
They say no publicity is bad publicity, but a Texas City, Texas plumber probably disagrees with that statement: a photo of his old truck, complete with his company’s logo and phone number still on the door, showed up on the social media account of a Syrian terrorist group, with the terrorists using the old truck as a mobile artillery platform.
Mark Oberholtzer, owner of Mark-1 Plumbing in Texas City, traded in his Ford F-250 pickup truck years ago and promptly forgot about it, Fox News reports. That is, until he began getting phone calls accusing him of supporting Syrian terrorists.
It turns out a Syrian terrorist organization known as Ansar al-Deen Front posted a propaganda video on social media with the truck in it, complete with jihadists shooting artillery out the back as the truck drives through the Syrian countryside.
Oberholtzer told Galveston Daily News that by Tuesday his business had received over a thousand faxes and phone calls, some accusing him of supporting terrorism in Syria.
“A few of the people are really ugly.”
How the plumber’s old truck wound up in Syria – if it actually did wind up in Syria; see below – is anyone’s guess. Huffington Post reports that the plumber traded in his old truck via AutoNation. Reached for comment, an AutoNation spokesperson claimed they had no knowledge of how the truck wound up in Syria.
“AutoNation took the truck in a trade-in, we immediately sent it to an auction house, the auction house then took the title and sold it to a local used car dealer. AutoNation was nothing but the pass-through for this vehicle.”
However, the plumber’s old truck may not have actually wound up in the hands of Syrian terrorists after all. The Daily Mail did some digging and found a similar video featuring a similar truck in almost exactly the same position, raising the possibility that the plumber’s old truck was photoshopped into the video over the terrorist’s actual truck.
“Superimposing a better vehicle and gun into a still frame from the original video would be significantly easier than trying to alter the video itself.”
Although why the Syrian terrorists would prefer to use the plumber’s truck rather than their own in a propaganda video remains unclear.
Regardless, the Texas City plumber just wants the whole thing to go away. CBS News reports that Mr. Oberholtzer has hired an attorney in an effort to have Twitter remove the image.
“We have a secretary here, she’s scared to death. We all have families. We don’t want no problems.”
[Images courtesy of: Daily Mail]
