“He was only 18 years old at the time. It was a big shock for me here in South Africa, not being able to help him,” Musk's father said.
Elon Musk's life as a teenager was no joke, as his father revealed that a “scumbag co-worker” once pulled a knife on the tech billionaire while he was waiting tables at a restaurant when he was a teenager in Canada.
Tesla CEO Errol's 77-year-old father said The US Sun: “Elon called me once after some bastard 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 father and told him that one of the other waiters “started bothering him” while he was working.
“He told the man to stop, but the man escalated the problem,” Errol said.
“Finally, they confronted each other and the man pulled out a knife. Elon immediately subdued him and took the knife. He was only 18 years old at the time. It was a big shock for me here in South Africa, not being able to help him. But Elon said he couldn't help us. “we would worry.”
Electromechanical engineer Errol also explained how a jealous husband pulled a gun on him in their home while Elon, now 52, and his brothers had dinner.
“We were making an announcement, her and I,” Errol explained. “The husband came to our house while Elon, Kimbal and Tosca were having dinner, brandishing a huge silver revolver. I calmed him down and told him I was just trying to make him jealous.
“Later he shot himself.”
Errol has also had more than a few brushes with the darker side of life on several occasions, including the time he shot dead three intruders at a property he owned in Johannesburg. At the same time, his little 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 South Africa.
He revealed that the brothers once had to “walk through a pool of blood next to a dead person with a knife stuck in his brain” while getting off a train to go to an anti-apartheid music concert.
Elon immigrated to Canada, his mother's native country, from South Africa in 1989 and initially settled in Montreal before moving to Vancouver and working on a farm and sawmill.
In 1990, he enrolled at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, before transferring to the University of Pennsylvania two years later.
While sharing crazy stories from his colorful past, Errol said: “Nasty but typically South African.”
He said: “I've carried a 357 by my side and when I sleep for 35 or 40 years.”
