Vandals hit home of Trump supporter in Ceres
A vocal supporter of presidential candidate Donald Trump woke up to find his home and vehicles vandalized. The Trump banner and American flag mounted on his garage were gone.
“Needless to say I’ll be getting a security system,” said Aaron Brittson on Sunday as he surveyed broken egg shells on his driveway on Bella Flora Drive in Ceres.
Tan paint pooled below a large splatter on the hood of his bright blue work truck. A bent and broken wall-mounted flag pole aimed oddly sideways, its banner with “Make America Great Again,” and the U.S. flag above it, gone.
Yellow spatters clung to the stucco house walls, and yellow blobs with shell fragments lay on the interior of a bass-fishing boat in the driveway. Across the street, fresh permanent marker spelled out a political comment, the cuss word self-censored with stars: “F*** Trump”
Needless to say I’ll be getting a security system.
Aaron Brittson
“It’s sad. I’m just a working man. I’ve worked all my life, since I was 12 years old,” said Brittson, who runs his own business as a flooring contractor. “It’s the last thing you want to wake up to.”
He said his family, including three children and one of their friends staying overnight, slept through the incident. Neighbor Gerardo Arenhardt spotted the damage and called Brittson shortly after 8:30 a.m.
“It is real sad we’re having this kind of thing in a nice neighborhood,” Arenhardt said. “People can voice opinions. What are their parents teaching them?”
It is real sad we’re having this kind of thing in a nice neighborhood.
Gerardo Arenhardt
A neighbor’s motion-triggered home security camera caught four boys fleeing from the direction of Brittson’s house at 3:24 a.m., Brittson said, but does not show the damage being done.
“This is not good,” said Brittson’s son, Robert Matthews, 13. “I think they took it too far.”
Friends at school tease him for his family’s political views, Matthews said, and one group just last week confronted him about the Trump banner on his house.
Brittson said he is the only Trump supporter on his block and is often harassed for his support of the Republican front-runner. The large number of immigrants and Muslims in the area make it unfriendly to Trump supporters, Brittson said, but he believes the New York billionaire will help the working man.
“I might have to tell my wife to take the Trump sticker off her (sport-utility vehicle),” he said. “She’s confronted every day with people flipping her off because of it.”
Asked whether the incident will quiet his support for Trump, Brittson said, “No. I can’t let it. I can’t allow it.”
Nan Austin: 209-578-2339, @NanAustin
This story was originally published May 8, 2016 at 5:25 PM with the headline "Vandals hit home of Trump supporter in Ceres."