February 20, 2024
Elon Musk’s life as a teen was no joke as his father has revealed that the tech billionaire once had a knife pulled on him by a "scumbag co-worker" while he waited tables at a restaurant as a teen in Canada.
The Tesla CEO’s dad Errol, 77, told The US Sun: "Elon called me once after a scumbag pulled a knife on him. He handled it."
He said that when Elon was working as a waiter at a restaurant in Richmond, near Vancouver, he once called his dad and told him that one of the other waiters "started picking on him" while he was working.
"He told the man to stop but the man escalated the issue," Errol said.
"Finally, they faced each other, and the man pulled out a knife. Elon subdued him immediately and took the knife. He was just 18 at the time. It was quite a scare for me here in South Africa, unable to help him, but Elon said not to worry."
Electromechanical engineer Errol also explained how he was held at gunpoint by a jealous husband at his home while Elon, now 52, and his siblings ate dinner.
"We were doing an advert, me and her," Errol explained. "The husband came to our home while Elon, Kimbal and Tosca were having supper, brandishing a huge silver revolver. I calmed him down and told him she was just trying to make him jealous.
"Later on, he shot himself.”
Errol has also had more than a few brushes with the darker side of life on several occasions including the time when he shot three intruders dead at a property he owned in Johannesburg. At the same time, his young daughter, Alexandra clung to his leg.
Author Walter Isaacson, who wrote Elon Musk's biography, revealed that the tech billionaire and his brother Kimbal were no strangers to violence during their childhood in apartheid-era South Africa.
He revealed that the siblings once had to "wade through a pool of blood next to a dead person with a knife sticking out of his brain" while they were getting off a train to an anti-apartheid music concert.
Elon emigrated to his mother's home country of Canada from South Africa in 1989 and initially settled in Montreal before moving to Vancouver and working on a farm and a lumber mill.
In 1990, he enrolled at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, before transferring to the University of Pennsylvania two years later.
While sharing wild stories from his colourful past, Errol said: "Unpleasant but typically South Africa."
He said: "I've carried a 357 next to me and when I sleep for 35 to 40 years now."