Partners Claudia Friedman and Christy Stewart recently came home to their Houston, Tex. Apartment complex and found Stewart’s motorcycle covered in animal feces and urine. The Dallas Voice reported that the vandal wrote, “Fuck you move your dike (sic) bike now” in paint on the concrete around the motorcycle.
Although the motorcycle was left unharmed, the bike’s cover was ruined. According to Stewart, she and Friedman left their apartment complex in the afternoon and returned around 8:00 p.m., when they found the mess and hateful message. This is the first trouble that the couple has had in the three years that they have lived in the apartment.
The couple quickly called the police, who labeled the incident as a hate crime, however they have not yet had any leads. There are, unfortunately, no security cameras in the parking deck on which the vandalism happened.
Stewart told the Voice, “Without any witnesses, no confrontations with anyone in the past, the police officer said there’s nothing we can do.”
Based on “dirty looks” that they have gotten around their apartment complex and the fact that the handwriting on the concrete looks like it belongs to a woman, Stewart said she has her suspicions.
In response to the hateful message, Stewart and Friedman left the motorcycle parked in the same spot with a clean cover and a message that reads, “To the immature vandals: We are NOT moving our bike!”
Stewart added that most of their neighbors have been supportive of her partnership with Friedman.
“It’s heartbreaking,” said Stewart. “I would say ignorance is the most violent force in society. But you can’t fix stupid.”
A report from the Texas Department of Public Safety stated that 32 percent of hate crimes reported in Texas in 2011 were from a bias of sexual orientation. Hate crime is defined by the 1993 Texas Hate Crimes Act as “crimes that are motivated by prejudice, hatred or advocacy of violence” and “crimes that manifest evidence of prejudice based on race, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity or disability.”
If you have been accused of a hate crime, contact a criminal lawyer in San Antonio, Tex. to fight for you in court. Attorneys at the Law Office of Kerrisa Chelkowski will fight for your rights today.