"AutoNation was nothing but the pass-through for this vehicle", explained the spokesperson a year ago.
Mark Oberholtzer said his company has received thousands of angry and threatening phone calls since a photo of the Ford F-250 pickup truck was posted on Twitter in December a year ago by a member of a jihadist group operating near Aleppo.
Oberholtzer said the salesman told him that AutoNation would remove the decals before the truck was resold.
The lawsuit claims that a salesman at Autonation Ford Gulf Freeway in Houston stopped Oberholtzer from peeling the decal off the door when he traded the old truck in for a new one. "I really at first thought it was just somebody playing with us". Apparently, a stipulation of the sale was that the Mark-1 Plumbing decals be removed from the truck before it was re-sold.
"I don't need this press and I don't need the threats to my family", Oberholtzer told ABC.
In addition, it's claimed that AutoNation declared that they "never touched the truck" before it was sold at auction, and it's claimed AutoNation "stated that it was not their responsibility to remove the decal prior to sending it" away.
DeAndre Hopkins: Texans 'not crazy,' want to involve Hopkins
I counted 16 double-teams and three triple-teams on Watt, and every time he tried a spin move, a blocker was standing in his way. He's hoping to continue that streak on Sunday, when the Texans travel to Indianapolis, where the franchise has never won a game.
Mark Oberholtzer said in a lawsuit seeking $1 million damages that he has been forced to carry a gun for protection and was grilled by investigators from the Department of Homeland security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The auction house could not confirm for CBS News that it sold the truck. "And that's why he's trying to stop it and say look AutoNation is the one who sold this vehicle that ended up in terrorists hands".
It's not known exactly how the truck then made its way from Mersin, Turkey to Syria. But there it was in the photo - which then went viral. It showed Oberholtzer's truck, with his company logo and phone number on it, loaded with terrorists firing weapons.
But he said that it is hard to not fear for his family when new photos of his truck surface in Syria. If ISIS does something it's pulled back on our account.
The plumbing company says that they've lost money and that employees are afraid to come in to work. Dealer representatives told him they would take the stickers off because they had a better system for removing them without damaging the paint, it said. He wants the country to know that he does not support terrorism.
