According to witnesses, a man removed a pickax from a guitar case about 3 a.m. local time and smashed the red marble marker bearing the president’s name on Hollywood Boulevard, KABC reported. Trump had received his place on the Walk of Fame in 2007 for his work on “The Apprentice.” Pictures show the pickax had been left at the scene amid the debris.
Los Angeles Police Department officials said when they arrived at the scene around 3:30 a.m., the suspect had already left.
LAPD said the suspect is currently waiting to be processed by officials.
The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, which administers the Hollywood Walk of Fame, issued a statement saying it intends to work with police to “prosecute to the full extent of the law,” something it would do “for any Walk of Fame star that has been vandalized.”
“The Hollywood Walk of Fame is an institution celebrating the positive contributions of the inductees,” Leron Gubler, president and CEO of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, said in the statement. “When people are unhappy with one of our honorees, we would hope that they would project their anger in more positive ways than to vandalize a California State landmark. Our democracy is based on respect for the law. People can make a difference by voting and not destroying public property.”
“The Hollywood Historic Trust will repair the star immediately but requires several days of seasoning before it is polished. During that time, it will be covered to protect it,” the statement continued.
Wednesday’s incident isn’t the first time Trump’s star has been defaced. Earlier this month, comedian George Lopez pretended to urinate on Trump’s star using a bottle of water, TMZ reported.
Early in 2016, KABC reported that the star had previously been spraypainted with a swastika and a mute icon. And in July of that year, around the time of the Republican National Convention, a street artist known as Plastic Jesus built a miniature wall around Trump’s star.
Days before he defeated Hillary Clinton at the ballot box in 2016, Trump’s star was damaged by a man wielding a sledgehammer; that vandal had hidden in plain sight, dressed as a construction worker.
The suspect in that incident, James Lambert Otis, was arrested in 2016.
In 2017, Otis pleaded no contest to a felony count of vandalism. He was slapped with fines and given probation.