Alice Barr

KHOU-TV, Houston

TEXAS CITY, Texas — A plumber's traded-in truck has landed in Syria, and the man's friends at home think he's been aiding terrorists.

It's all because of a photo posted on an Islamic militant group's Twitter feed. It shows one of Mark-1 Plumbing's old work trucks with its logo on the side, turned into an anti-aircraft firing weapon on the front lines of Syria's civil war.

"We had no intentions or no idea that this would even happen," said Jeff Oberholtzer, son of Mark-1's owner.

He traded the truck in himself in November 2013 at an AutoNation Ford dealership about 20 miles away in Houston.

The truck immediately went to auction and likely traded owners over and over before apparently winding up in the hands of a Chechen group named Jaish al-Muhajireen wal-Ansar, a dealership spokesman said.

The group primarily consists of Chechen and Russian fighters but also has recruits from Europe and the USA, according to the Terrorism Research & Analysis Consortium.

"To think something we would use to pull trailers now is being used for terror, it's crazy," Oberholtzer said. "Never in my lifetime would think something like that."

He's had to take his phone off the hook because of the fallout of angry, even threatening, phone calls from across the USA.

"We have a secretary here. She's scared to death," he said. "We all have families. We don't want no problems."

Tracing how the Ford F-250 pickup wound up in the middle of a Middle East civil war is nearly impossible, but Oberholtzer said he's learned a valuable lesson in hindsight: Remove any company logos from vehicles before selling them; you don't know where they'll end up.