MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — A man who said he drove cross-country to confront Google officials has been arrested in California with three baseball bats in his car’s trunk.
Police in Mountain View, the San Francisco-area city where Google’s based, were warned by two other agencies, including Waterville Police, that Kyle Long was on his way and arrested him Sunday on suspicion of making criminal threats. It’s unclear whether he has an attorney.
Police say the 33-year-old Waterville, Maine, man was upset because his YouTube channel had been shut down. He allegedly told Waterville police that he’d get violent if his Google confrontation didn’t go well.
Google owns YouTube.
In a post on Facebook, Mountain View Police said they received notice Friday from Iowa state troopers that Long’s vehicle had been in a collision in that state, and that he had vandalized a gas station bathroom just after that. Long told Iowa officials he was on his way to Mountain View to meet with Google after his YouTube channel was shut down, losing him money.
Employees at the Iowa gas station store didn’t press charges, and the collision was not serious enough to detain him in Iowa.
On Sunday, Waterville Police told Mountain View police they had information that Long had reached California and said that if his meeting with Google did not go well, he would resort to physical violence, according to the Facebook post.
Mountain View police deployed officers to the highways around the Google complex to try to intercept Long before he reached the main campus. They also notified other cities that had Google campuses that Long was in California, in case he made a detour to those campuses.
Long was spotted Sunday afternoon in Mountain View, and officers stopped his car and detained him without incident. They found three baseball bats in his car. His phone contained directions on how to get to Mountain View.
Long was arrested for making criminal threats and his car was towed. He is being held on $25,000 at the Santa Clara County Jail.
Last April, a video maker with a grudge over YouTube policies, Nasim Aghdam, shot and wounded three people at the YouTube campus in San Bruno before shooting herself.
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