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Roundup: Hollywood Walk of Fame becomes "ground zero" of U.S. presidential election

Xinhua, November 1, 2016 Adjust font size:

As U.S. Presidential Election Day on Nov.8 is getting close, battles between Republic candidate Donald Trump and his counterpart Hillary Clinton have spread to the Walk of Fame in Hollywood.

Early in the morning of Wednesday, Donald Trump's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame was vandalized by a 52-year-old man named James Otis, according to videotapes released by witnesses to social media platforms such as YouTube and Twitter.

The suspect dressed as a Los Angeles Department of Transportation worker beat Trump's star with a pickax until it was severely chipped and unreadable.

Otis was arrested by Los Angeles Police Department a day after, and "may face a felony charge for the act," the New York Post reported.

One day later, a homeless woman with a gray hoodie and dark glasses, holding many pro-Trump signs complaining about immigrants and President Barack Obama, sat by Trump's star, apparently to protect Trump's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

A videoclip taken and uploaded to YouTube showed that she was harassed by a crowd and several people were trying to take her signs away. A man then started to tear up her signs. She pushed back at him, causing him to fall to the ground.

According to CBS NEWS, Koali Fikator, who shot and posted the video, wrote on his YouTube post: "The woman told the crowd to 'let her be' when some offered help and that she eventually got up and made a new sign disparaging Mexicans and urging people to vote for Trump."

Although Fikator deleted his original post, this video created a sensation on YouTube.

"Even folks who don't like Trump, defend the homeless woman's right to defend the billionaire," CBS reported.

"Yes she's supporting Trump but you don't do anything like that. That's still rude, She's still a human being," a viewer of that video told CBS.

Los Angeles Police Department is searching for this woman. So is Trump's attorney Michael Cohen, who tweeted last Friday trying to locate this woman, "as Mr. Trump has a gift for her."

The story continued last weekend. A group of Trump's supporters rallied at the site of Trump's star, holding signs such as "Build that Wall" and "Come Out for Trump."

They were confronted by Trump's opponents who passed by and engaged in verbal sparring, chanting "Vote Trump" loudly.

"In one instance, a passerby and then another got up in the face of a man who was guarding Trump's star and began shouting profanities at him in a threatening manner, forcing him to take several steps backward," the Los Angeles Daily News reported Monday.

From the star-destroyed incident, to the homeless star-protector, to the Walk of Fame rally, somehow in less than a week, just as the Hollywood Patch pointed out, "Hollywood has become LA's unlikely ground zero for Trump supporters." Endi