Berkeley Tesla protest: Trump supporter arrested after firing stun gun

A peaceful protest outside the Tesla dealership turned ugly on Saturday when a Trump supporter on an electric bike was confronted by protesters and whipped out a stun gun to ward them off.

A Berkeleyside reporter was at the scene of the altercation and witnessed electrical sparks coming from the stun gun a number of times. No one was actually zapped, the people targeted told Berkeleyside.

Berkeley police arrested Rick Fuze, 33, of Berkeley, who owns an e-bike repair shop on University Avenue. Berkeley Police Lt. Steve Rego said at the scene that Fuze would probably be charged with brandishing a weapon or assault, but only if the Taser connected physically with someone.

As he was being arrested, Fuze told police he used the stun gun in self-defense because someone pulled his hair.

“I didn’t tase anyone,” Fuze said. “I pulled it out to protect myself.”

The protesters who confronted Fuze said they knew who he was — he had shown up to the protest last week — and were annoyed he was playing loud music and running his bike up and down the street. They tried to stop him.

“I just wanted to drive him away,” said James Richardson of Berkeley, who stepped in front of Fuze’s bike several times.

Susan Kegeles of Berkeley also walked up to Fuze. He then pulled out his stun gun and flashed it in her face. Kegeles said she tried to pull Fuze off his bike. He then grabbed her arm, and she pulled his hair, she said.

Richardson and others then grabbed Fuze and police rushed in and arrested him.

The incident comes at a time of growing tension in the United States as Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and CEO of Tesla, is overseeing the effort to reduce the size of the federal government by slashing tens of thousands of federal employees and eliminating longstanding departments, agencies and programs. President Donald Trump has issued dozens of executive orders, many of which federal judges have ruled are unconstitutional. Despite that, Trump is ignoring some of those federal orders.

The sense that American democracy is under attack brought Kegeles and about 200 others out to protest in front of the Tesla dealership. She said she felt compelled to try to stop Fuze from disrupting the protest because she feels a moral duty to resist what is happening.

“When he tried to hurt me I wasn’t going to wait around,” she said.

People concerned about Musk’s role in the Trump administration have been protesting outside the Fourth Street dealership every Saturday since Feb. 15 as part of the #TeslaTakedown movement that has spread across the U.S. The demonstrations have been largely peaceful with just a few incidents that required police intervention.

On March 1, a protester threw a can of rust-red paint at the doors of the Tesla dealership at 1731 Fourth St. He was later arrested and charged with vandalism, resisting arrest and being in possession of a controlled substance, according to Officer Jessica Perry, BPD’s spokesperson. On March 16, police responded to a report of a woman who was shouting obscenities at customers inside the showroom. Berkeley police came and later charged the 42-year-old woman with trespassing.

Police also have had reports of 13 Teslas being vandalized this year.

Fuze told Berkeleyside on Friday that he did not believe the Tesla protests were “organic” and that the group Indivisible, backed by “Democratic super PAC money,” was paying people to show up. There is no evidence this is true. Fuze attended the March 15 protest because he wanted to “show that not everyone in Berkeley is against Elon Musk and Trump and what DOGE is doing.”

Fuze also was critical that the Berkeley protesters were almost all over 60 and white.

As a person of color, he said, he also wanted to show that not every Trump supporter is a “tiki torch-carrying white man from the Midwest.”

Fuze sent a video of his actions at a previous protest to numerous media outlets, including Berkeleyside. He also goes by the name DJ Occult.

Despite the incident, the majority of the hour-and-a-half protest was peaceful. People held up signs, cheered when passing cars honked their horns, and chanted for Trump and Musk to stop dismantling the government.

Editor’s note: This story was corrected after publication after new video made clear the order of events during the altercation: Rick Fuze used his stun gun before Susan Kegeles pulled his hair, not afterwards.

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Frances Dinkelspiel, Berkeleyside and Cityside co-founder, is a journalist and author. Her first book, Towers of Gold: How One Jewish Immigrant Named Isaias Hellman Created California, published in November... More by Frances Dinkelspiel