Elon Musk said in an interview with biographer Walter Isaacson that the man who killed three people outside an Austin bar in March had been fired from Tesla’s Gigafactory months earlier, after he assaulted a female coworker who stepped on his prayer rug.

“We had someone who was working at the Tesla factory in Austin until December of last year,” Musk said.

“He was fired because he assaulted a woman who stepped on his prayer rug in the factory. OK — so, she wasn’t expecting anyone to be praying in the factory, and he was praying in the factory. She accidentally stepped on his prayer rug, and he assaulted her. He violently assaulted her.

“So he was fired for that, and then a few months later, he went and killed three students in a bar in downtown Austin. Now, I think we shouldn’t let people like that into the country. Do you?”

The shooter was Ndiaga Diagne, 53, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Senegal who lived in the Austin area. On March 1, he opened fire outside Buford’s Backyard Beer Garden in Austin, Texas, killing three people and wounding 15 others before Austin police officers shot and killed him.

Diagne had become a citizen in April 2013 and legally bought the handgun and rifle used in the attack in 2017.

The FBI’s San Antonio Field Office later said Diagne acted alone, had never been the subject of an FBI investigation, and had shown no signs of outside direction.

At the time of the shooting, he wore a shirt with an Iranian flag design and a sweatshirt that read “Property of Allah.”

Investigators found he admired the late Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. A Quran was in the vehicle he used.

Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis said her department had no prior contact with him.

A separate civil suit filed by Lilian Mendoza Brady, a 65-year-old Tesla employee, alleged that Diagne assaulted her on or about Dec. 4, 2025, while both worked at the Austin Gigafactory.

The complaint said he was praying in a common area or walking path during a company-sanctioned prayer break when he grabbed her and threw her to the ground, injuring her neck and back.

Brady reported the incident to Tesla and to the Travis County Sheriff’s Office.

The suit accused the company of negligence due to them allowing Diagne, who reportedly had “known aggressive tendencies,” into shared employee spaces; Brady sought more than $1 million in damages.

The sheriff’s office confirmed it investigated; the case was later closed, since Diagne was dead. Tesla has sought to have the dispute resolved through arbitration.