A 30-year-old man has been charged with arson for attacking Google’s US headquarters in Mountain View, California, with Molotov cocktails in beer bottles.
Rual Murillo Diaz, from Oakland, was arrested on 30 June after his car was spotted in Google’s headquarters. The vehicle, a 2004 grey Volkswagen Touareg, was previously linked to three separate incidents at the campus.
The first of these, and the one charge currently levelled at Diaz, is that he threw a pair of flaming projectiles at Google’s HQ on 19 May. These landed close to a Google Street View car, covering the area in flames, although the car itself sustained minimal damage.
The two previous incidents relate to bullets being fired through the window of a Google office building, and an instance when a Google self-driving car was successfully set on fire. Charges for these attacks are pending.
According to a search warrant affidavit, when police intercepted Diaz on 30 June they found a pipe bomb and a gun case in his car.
The affidavit describes that, during police interviews, Diaz said he carried out the attacks because he felt “Google was watching him and that made him upset”. He also reportedly kept journals documenting the times he felt he was being watched.
NBC reports that Diaz faces a maximum prison term of 20 years and a $250,000 fine, if convicted on all counts. He is due to return to court on 8 July.
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