(VIDEO) Shirtless Man Arrested After Vandalizing Waymo, Halting Traffic in Busy East Hollywood Intersection

A shirtless man was arrested Saturday after climbing onto a Waymo self-driving vehicle in the middle of a busy East Hollywood intersection and tearing apart parts of the car while traffic came to a full stop around him, according to the Los Angeles Police Department and video footage captured by bystanders.

The incident unfolded shortly after 1:35 p.m. at the intersection of Sunset Boulevard and Edgemont Street, according to LAPD. Video of the scene, posted to the Citizen app, shows the man lounging on the Waymo's shattered windshield before climbing onto the roof of the self-driving car and pulling out its internal components while shouting at the sensor mounted on top of the vehicle and at nearby traffic. An LAPD officer said the department responded to a call reporting a disturbance, describing a man with no shirt and brown pants standing on top of a car and vandalizing its windshield.

Traffic on Sunset Boulevard came to a complete standstill as drivers braked to avoid the stopped Waymo, with bystanders filming the scene as officers arrived and pulled the man off the vehicle. Officers took the man into custody at the scene and arrested him on suspicion of vandalism. It remains unclear whether anyone was riding inside the Waymo when the vandalism began, and the man's identity had not been publicly released as of Monday. What prompted the outburst also remains unclear, with authorities and Waymo yet to offer an explanation for what triggered the confrontation.

Under California law, vandalism is governed by Penal Code Section 594, which allows the offense to be charged as either a misdemeanor or, depending on the extent of the damage and the suspect's criminal history, a felony "wobbler." Potential penalties for a vandalism conviction in California can include fines, court-ordered restitution to cover repair costs, and jail time, with the severity of any sentence generally tied to the dollar value of the damage caused.

Waymo, the autonomous vehicle company owned by Google parent company Alphabet, expanded its ride-hailing service across Los Angeles in June 2025, adding to a growing footprint of driverless vehicles operating throughout the city's streets. Since that expansion, the company's self-driving cars have periodically become flashpoints for both public frustration and outright vandalism. The vehicles have drawn criticism from some residents and drivers for occasionally causing traffic disruptions in already congested parts of the city, including reports of Waymo vehicles freezing or struggling to navigate around active emergency scenes.

Saturday's incident adds to a string of similar episodes involving Waymo vehicles in the Los Angeles area over the past year. Last month, a group of teenagers was seen dangerously hanging out of the windows of a Waymo as the vehicle made its way through busy Santa Monica traffic, an incident that drew widespread attention on social media. In a separate case, two 15-year-olds were detained by police after Waymo itself contacted law enforcement regarding reports of underage drinking and the use of Orbeez gel blasters, a type of toy gun that fires small water-absorbing beads, from inside one of its driverless vehicles. During periods of unrest in Los Angeles last year, Waymo vehicles were also targeted more destructively, with several reported to have been set on fire amid broader protest activity in the city.

Waymo's practice of reviewing onboard vehicle footage and, in some cases, proactively alerting police to passenger behavior, as occurred in the teen drinking incident, has sparked a broader conversation among privacy advocates and policy analysts about how autonomous vehicle companies monitor and manage the behavior of both passengers and members of the public interacting with their vehicles on public roads. Saturday's vandalism incident is likely to add further fuel to that ongoing debate, particularly given how publicly and disruptively it played out in the middle of one of East Hollywood's busiest intersections during daylight hours.

KTLA reported that it had reached out to both the LAPD and Waymo for further comment on the incident and had not received a response from either as of the station's initial report. Other local outlets covering the story similarly noted that Waymo had not immediately responded to requests for information about how the company's onboard safety systems are designed to respond to physical attacks on its vehicles, or whether incidents of vandalism targeting its driverless cars have become more frequent since the service's expansion across the city.

The confrontation is the latest example of a broader pattern of friction between the public and the autonomous vehicle industry as robotaxi services continue expanding into more cities across the United States. As companies like Waymo scale up their driverless fleets, incidents involving vandalism, unruly passengers and general public curiosity or hostility toward the unmanned vehicles have become a recurring storyline in cities where the technology has taken root, raising ongoing questions for both law enforcement and the companies themselves about how best to protect the vehicles, the public and the riders who use them.

For now, the man arrested Saturday faces potential vandalism charges as the investigation continues, with the LAPD's Hollywood Division handling the case. Waymo has not detailed the extent of the damage caused to the vehicle or indicated whether it plans to pursue restitution through the criminal justice process, a step companies operating vandalism-prone equipment in public spaces sometimes take following high-profile incidents of property damage.

The episode comes amid an unusually active stretch of local news in Los Angeles, with KTLA's coverage of the Waymo incident appearing alongside reports of an unrelated armed standoff in Fullerton and an off-duty Long Beach police officer opening fire on robbery suspects over the same weekend, part of a broader wave of local crime and public safety stories the station covered heading into the new week. As of Monday, no additional details about formal charges against the man arrested in the Waymo vandalism case had been released by the Los Angeles City Attorney's Office or the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office, both of which typically handle the filing of vandalism-related charges depending on the severity of the alleged offense.