Tesla Sentry Mode Captures Violence Vandal Smashed Model S’s Window

In the NSW-Victorian border town of Albury, a man was caught on a Sentry Mode camera when he vandalized a Tesla Model S.

Around 16:00, February 20, a man approached a vehicle in an underground car park and hit it several times with a skateboard. Of course, he didn't suspect that his criminal acts were recorded on camera.

Car owner Jules Boag/Twitter shared a video of the crime on his Twitter account. In the video you can see how a man hits the right mirror and Tesla's windshield with a skateboard.

The motives for this extremely aggressive behavior are unclear, but it seems that the criminal caused damage to Mr. Boag's car in the amount of at least several thousand dollars.

So a random guy just smashed the windscreen on my @tesla in #albury I guess he don’t know about sentry mode @Teslarati @Jalopnik @elonmusk pic.twitter.com/aJcJoDYoJl

— Jules Boag (@julesboag) February 20, 2020

Fortunately for all Tesla owners, the automaker has created Sentry Mode, which helps to understand what happened during the accident, protect the car from malicious acts or find the offender who caused the harm. This feature has repeatedly helped the police in solving crimes.

Sentry Mode controls what happens around the car when it is parked. If it detects a minor threat, for example, when someone is leaning on a car, it goes into "alert" mode and displays a message on the touch screen inside the car, warning that cameras are recording them.

In the case of a big threat, for example, if someone broke the window, Sentry Mode sends an alarm to the owner’s mobile phone and also plays music at maximum volume through the car speakers.

When Model S sent a text message to Mr. Boag, he immediately went to the car, but the offender had already managed to escape.

“I took it around to the cops straight away then put it on Facebook and Twitter,” Mr Boag said.

After watching the entire video, the car owner said: “The guys were just sitting around and they decided to leave and one walks over and smashes the window,” he continued “I don't even know if it was related to it being a Tesla, or if someone had a nice Commodore there it would have happened to them. I can’t even work out what the reason is”.

Despite the seeming randomness of the attack, Boag said that, unfortunately, this is not the first time. “It’s not uncommon. I’ve had incidents in carparks before where people have damaged a car. ”

He is very pleased with the Sentry Mode, because despite the negative feelings after the incident, he has the opportunity to see what really happened and bring the perpetrators to justice. 

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