Disgruntled Worker Torches $600 Million Warehouse, Brags He’s the Next Luigi Mangione
A 29-year-old warehouse employee named Chamel Abdulkarim didn’t like his pay so he allegedly filmed himself setting a massive Kimberly-Clark distribution center in Ontario, California, on fire.
The April 7 blaze gutted a 1.2 million-square-foot building packed with paper products, racked up roughly $500-600 million in damage, and put hundreds of his own coworkers out of a job.
Instead of quitting or finding better work like a normal person, Abdulkarim reportedly texted a coworker afterward whining that the company should pay workers more of “the value WE bring” instead of giving it to corporate and shareholders.
He complained no shareholders were “picking up a shift.” In a phone call, he straight-up compared himself to Luigi Mangione, the accused assassin turned anti-capitalist folk hero on the left.
Federal prosecutors charged him with arson of a building used in interstate commerce, which carries a mandatory five-year minimum sentence.
On top of that, California hit him with one count of aggravated arson and six counts of arson of a structure. He’s being held without bail.