Man drives 3,300 miles to talk to YouTube about deleted video

On Sunday, police in Mountain View, California, where Google is headquartered, arrested a man who drove more than 3,300 miles from Maine to discuss what he thought was the company’s removal of his YouTube account and the one video he’d posted – one about getting rich quick.

It was not, in fact, deleted by YouTube. It turns out, his wife deleted it, concerned as she was about her husband’s mental state. She told BuzzFeed News that the video, created by 33-year-old Kyle Long, was “rambling” and “bizarre.”

According to a press release from the Mountain View police department (MVPD), Iowa State Patrol on Friday gave them a heads-up about Long’s journey. Iowa police spoke to Long twice that day: once when he got into a collision (without injuries) and then again after he vandalized a restroom at a gas station store a short time later.

Employees at the gas station store didn’t want to press charges, and the collision didn’t warrant Long’s detention, so Iowa police let him go.

Three baseball bats and a serious need to chat

Then, on Sunday, the MVPD got another heads-up. This one came from police in Long’s hometown of Waterville, Maine. Waterville police told MV police that they’d been tipped off about Long having made it to California. They’d also gotten a tip that he intended to resort to physical violence if his meeting with Google execs didn’t go well.

MVPD began to look into the matter …and kept an eye out for Long’s arrival. Officers were stationed in and around Googleplex, and monitoring all the major highways around the city in order to intercept Long before he could step foot on Google’s main campus.

On Sunday afternoon, around 1pm, they spotted Long’s car. When they stopped him, they found three baseball bats.