Texas Plumber's Truck Ends Up With Syria Fighters

Texas plumber Jeff Oberholtzer has some important advice for business owners: Take company logos off your vehicles before they're traded in. He didn't, and now a Ford F-250 pickup truck he traded in at a dealership in Houston last year has ended up in the hands of Islamic militants in Syria, who have turned it into an anti-aircraft firing weapon. The name and phone number of the family business, Mark-1 Plumbing, are still visible on the side of the truck, and Oberholtzer tells KHOU that the company's terrified secretary has been getting angry phone calls from all over the country.

"To think something we would use to pull trailers now is being used for terror, it's crazy," says Oberholtzer, stressing that the Texas City firm "has nothing to do with terror at all." The AutoNation Ford dealership where Oberholtzer traded in the truck says it went to auction immediately and probably passed through several owners before it somehow ended up with Jaish al-Muhajireen wal-Ansar, a militant group consisting mostly of Chechen and Russian fighters, USA Today reports. Police say they've stepped up patrols around the plumbing business, reports Reuters. (More Syrian civil war stories.)