A hidden camera captured this woman brazenly vandalising a man's prized Tesla in a Sydney shopping centre carpark. Photo / Facebook
A hidden camera captured this woman brazenly vandalising a man's prized Tesla in a Sydney shopping centre carpark. Photo / Facebook
A woman has been captured brutally vandalising a man's prized Tesla in the carpark of a mall in western Sydney.
The extraordinary footage has been viewed almost 30,000 times on Facebook and Twitter since car owner Daniel Pearce posted it on Sunday night.
The unidentified woman makes a beeline for the Tesla. Photo / Facebook
According to Pearce, the incident took place at about 2pm yesterday while his $104,547 (AU$100,000) vehicle was parked inside the carpark of the Westfield Shopping Centre in Penrith.
The footage shows a tall woman with long hair looking around furtively before scraping her key along the length of the Tesla.
She is dressed in a white T-shirt and stripy pants that resemble pyjamas. At least one viewer has pointed out she appears to have an Apple watch strapped to her wrist.
"Just had our @tesla keyed in Penrith Westfields shipping (sic) centre carpark," Pearce captioned the video on Twitter.
"Thank god for sentry mode @elonmusk, retweet to help us catch this lady!!"
The footage has been shared more than 20,000 times on Facebook and a further 8000 times on Twitter.
Just had our @Tesla keyed in Penrith Westfields shipping centre car park. Thank god for sentry mode @elonmusk, retweet to help us catch this lady!! pic.twitter.com/Ej0D6cNyeL
Police told news.com.au the footage had been forwarded to the duty officer at Nepean Police Station but that no official report had been made by Pearce.
There was some speculation the woman was recognised and named on social media but police said they had no information yet on her identity.
The Sydney dad was at the mall for around two and a half hours before returning to his car and noticing the deep scratch along the side of it.
"I think all nice cars are at risk of being vandalised, probably all cars in general really, it's just that if you vandalise a Tesla you're going to get filmed,' he told the Daily Mail.
The woman's brazen actions were captured on the Tesla's motion sensor camera. Photo / Facebook
But not everyone agreed with Pearce's public shaming approach.
"Just let me get this straight: you exposed a person to a wide audience calling for a 'reaction', in an indiscriminate fashion?" tweeted Gabriele Chiusano.
"Of course she did a bad thing that could be reported to local authorities but on social media the reaction can be catastrophic."
Other's defended Pearce's actions.
"Let me help you out," Viv H wrote to his critics. "For absolutely no good reason, this woman randomly vandalised someone else's property, in a completely indiscriminate fashion and if you look closely, may have done the same to the car next to it.
Police told news.com.au they had no problem with Pearce posting the footage online.
Daniel Pearce was at the shopping centre for two and a half hours on Sunday when his car was vandalised. Photo / Facebook
The incident comes just days after a man was caught on camera vandalising a $125,000 Tesla Model S with a skateboard in the NSW-Victorian border town of Albury.
At around 4pm last Thursday, the man approached the vehicle in an underground carpark and hit it with the skateboard several times.
The car's owner Jules Boag shared footage, also captured on Tesla's sentry mode, of the incident on his Twitter account, where it has since been viewed tens of thousands of times.
In 2018, a serial car-keyer targeting vehicles in the affluent Sydney suburb of Vaucluse turned herself in to police after footage of her appearing to scratch a luxury Audi went viral.
The 51-year-old woman was charged with five counts of malicious damage after turning herself in at Waverley Police Station yesterday afternoon.
