Truck with Texas plates spray-painted with ‘Pro-Trump,’ ‘U.S.A.’ in Victoria
Posted September 10, 2020 4:00 pm.
Last Updated September 10, 2020 4:13 pm.
VICTORIA (NEWS 1130) — In another act of out-of-country licence plate anger, a man in Victoria says his father’s pickup was vandalized and the Texas plate was stolen.
Photos show the white pickup spray-painted with red and yellow letters reading, “Pro-Trump” and “U.S.A.”
Well #yyj, some really nice Victorians badly vandalized my dad’s truck with Texas plates. Smashed windshield, stole license plates and graffiti’d it.@keithbaldrey @Adam_Stirling @richardzussman @cfax1070 @RyanPriceCFAX @GlobalBC @CTVNewsVI @CTVVancouver @jjhorgan @vicpdcanada pic.twitter.com/xI6MUul0U0
— Jonathan Vidalin (@jonny_vi) September 10, 2020
The son of the truck owner says his dad is Canadian and came back three months ago to quarantine before helping the family with a new baby.
Const. Cam MacIntyre says there was extensive damage to the truck, including other “offensive language” painted on it.
“This is unacceptable to us, this is not something we want to see in our community,” he tells NEWS 1130. “We should be approaching people with out-of-country plates with a level of understanding. As Dr. Bonnie Henry has said, ‘We don’t know their stories.'”
Victoria police launched an investigation Thursday morning, and MacIntyre says officers are hoping people with information about the incident come forward.
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BC Liberals leader Andrew Wilkinson took to Twitter to say this sort of behaviour is absolutely unacceptable in B.C.
“You never know the reasons why someone with foreign or out-of-province licence plates is in British Columbia. We cannot allow fear of this pandemic to stoke hatred in our communities. B.C. is better than this,” he writes.
Last week, a Kamloops councillor starting leaving his business cards with a thank you note written on the back on the windshields of vehicles with out-of-town plates in hopes of changing the narrative when it comes to visitors. This came a month after a radio host’s truck with Alberta plates was vandalized in the city.