How a Texas Plumber's Truck Ended Up in a Syrian Islamist Video

The decal from a plumbing company's truck was never removed.

ByABC News
December 17, 2014, 4:08 PM

— -- A Texas plumber who has never been to Syria said he is getting threatening phone calls related to the country's civil war because his former truck appeared in an Islamist group's propaganda video.

Callers knew it was Mark Oberholtzer's old truck because it still had his company's decal and phone number on the door.

Now, it also has an anti-aircraft gun secured to the bed of the truck, as seen in a photo and video on the Syrian group's Twitter account.

Oberholtzer has run Mark-1 Plumbing in Texas City, Texas, for more than 30 years, but has nothing to do with the group in the video, according to ABC-owned station KTRK.

The trouble reportedly began when Oberholtzer traded in his Ford truck to a local dealership last year after the 2005 model vehicle had accumulated 172,000 miles.

Oberholtzer told The Galveston Daily News that he normally removes the decals of his trucks but didn't in this case, assuming that the dealership would do so.

"They were supposed to have done it and it looks like they didn't do it," he told The Galveston Daily News.

A representative for the dealership, AutoNation, told KTRK that it was not technically responsible for removing the decal and sold it to a different company in Texas. It was unclear how many times it may have been sold after that.

"How it ended up in Syria, I’ll never know," Oberholtzer told the Galveston Daily News.

Oberholtzer and AutoNation did not immediately respond to ABC News' requests for comment.