A defective Tesla charging cable ignited a devastating fire that caused more than $4 million in damages to former NFL wide receiver Randall Cobb’s mansion in Nashville, Tennessee, according to newly filed court documents. Thankfully, the Cobb family and their dog were able to escape the blaze without injury.
The Independent reports that the fire, which occurred in June 2024, forced Cobb, his wife Aiyda, their three young children, and their dog Louie to flee the 7,500-square-foot mansion in the middle of the night. All family members escaped without serious injury, though Aiyda Cobb posted on Instagram at the time that the family was “lucky to be alive.”
According to a civil complaint filed by AIG, Cobb’s insurance company, against Tesla, the family evacuated with “nothing but the clothes on our back and no shoes on our feet,” as Aiyda wrote on social media following the incident. The blaze completely destroyed a 2022 Tesla Model S Plaid and a Mercedes SUV parked in the garage before spreading throughout the rest of the Green Hills area home, which is valued at $5.2 million by Zillow.
The complaint, initially filed in state court on December 30 before being moved to federal court on February 2, provides detailed information about the fire’s origin. Two independent expert investigations were conducted following the fire, both reaching the same conclusion about the cause.
“Both expert investigations concluded that the fire originated from the Tesla charging cable,” the complaint states. The investigators determined that an electrical arc resulted from a failure of internal insulation on the conductors of the cable. They further concluded that the failure was caused by a defect in the cable itself, not from any misuse or external factors.
Cobb, who spent a decade playing for the Green Bay Packers before finishing his career with the Dallas Cowboys, Houston Texans, and New York Jets, purchased the five-bedroom, eight-bathroom home in the summer of 2022. That same year, he leased a Model S Plaid from a local Tesla showroom and had a dedicated 240-volt outlet installed in the garage specifically for charging the vehicle. The charging cable came with the car as an original equipment manufacturer part supplied by Tesla.
The complaint reveals that approximately one month before the major fire, the circuit breaker for the dedicated outlet tripped for no identified reason while the Tesla was charging. Cobb reset the circuit breaker, and the car resumed charging normally.
According to the lawsuit, on the morning of July 25, 2024, Cobb took the Model S for a drive. Upon returning home, he parked in the garage and connected the vehicle to the charging cable. According to Tesla’s records cited in the complaint, the vehicle stopped charging at 9:32 p.m. that evening. At approximately 9:51 p.m., smoke alarms alerted Cobb and his family to a fire in the garage.
When Cobb rushed to investigate, he observed flames in the area behind the Tesla at the garage wall. Firefighters responded to the scene and extinguished the blaze. Cobb later praised one first responder as a “true hero” on Instagram, writing, “I truly thought the cars were going to explode and we would lose him to this tragedy.”
The complaint specifies that the Tesla charging cable was responsible for igniting the fire, with the defect identified as a problem with the internal insulation on the conductors that caused it to arc and ignite during normal use. As a result of the fire, Cobb suffered real and personal property damage to his residence, damage to the Tesla, and damage to the Mercedes SUV, totaling more than $4 million in damages.
Breitbart News has reported extensively on lawsuits against Tesla, including the increasing frequency of victims trapped in burning cars by Elon Musk’s electric door handles. In one recent incident, five people died in a burning Tesla:
In a tragic incident that occurred in November last year, a Tesla Model S slammed into a tree and burst into flames, resulting in the deaths of all five passengers. Now, the children of two of the victims, Jeffrey Bauer, 54, and Michelle Bauer, 55, have filed a lawsuit against Tesla in Wisconsin state court, alleging that the car’s door design prevented their parents from escaping the burning vehicle.
According to the complaint, the Bauers survived the initial impact but were unable to escape the fire because the doors locked them inside. A nearby homeowner who called 911 reported hearing screams coming from inside the vehicle, while the local sheriff’s office found a cluster of bodies in the front seat, suggesting they may have been struggling to get out.
The lawsuit argues that Tesla’s design choices created a highly foreseeable risk, where occupants who survived a crash could remain trapped inside a burning vehicle. Although the doors can be manually opened from the inside, many owners and passengers are unaware of the location of the manual door release, especially in a crisis situation.
Read more at the Independent here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship.
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