San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
5 charged in Santa Rosa pig’s blood vandalism
The Sonoma County District Attorney’s Office charged five Santa Rosa residents Friday with felony conspiracy and vandalism for their roles in a spate of April mischief that included splattering pig’s blood on the former home of a defense witness in the Derek Chauvin murder trial.
Prosecutors charged Colin Metcalfe, Christina Henry, Kristen Aumoithe, Amber Lucas and Rowan Dalbey with conspiring together to splash animal blood on a public sculpture of a giant white hand outside the Santa Rosa Plaza and across the front of a house on Country Manor Drive. The charges bring a maximum threeyear sentence.
Attorneys for three of the defendants — Aumoithe, Lucas and Dalbey — have asserted their clients had no role in vandalizing the home and insisted investigators wrongly focused on them because of their activism in Santa Rosa’s Black Lives Matter movement.
“The trumped up felony charges are nothing more than an attack on my client’s political and societal activism in Sonoma County,” said Vincent Barrientos, an attorney for Aumoithe.
The fivepage complaint filed in Sonoma County Superior Court offered more details about the suspected roles each person played in the April 17 vandalism, which appeared to be an act of protest against police abuse.
The vandalized home was once owned by Barry Brodd, who testified in defense of exMinneapolis Police Officer Chauvin, who was convicted of murdering George Floyd last year. But Brodd, who worked as a Santa Rosa police officer until 2004, no longer lived there, officials said.
Prosecutors said that Lucas, 35, who has defended herself against the vandalism accusations in a statement given to The Chronicle, “posted on social media regarding an intent to act against Barry Brodd” four days before the vandalism, according to the complaint. She’s also accused of researching and sharing Brodd’s former address.
Prosecutors said Aumoithe, 34, purchased 5 gallons of pig’s blood from a Santa Rosa butcher. They said Dalbey, 20, made a sign with the words “oink oink” that was left leaning against the hand sculpture after she, Aumoithe and Lucas doused it with pig’s blood, according to the complaint.
Aumoithe gave some of the blood to Metcalfe, 25, and Henry, 20, on April 16 when the five gathered, according to prosecutors.
Metcalfe sent text messages to Aumoithe, Lucas and Dalbey “to inform them the house vandalism had been completed.”
Attorneys representing Aumoithe, Lucas and Dalbey issued a news release after their arrests in May defending their clients’ innocence and questioned whether they were targeted by investigators because of their roles in the Black Lives Matter movement in Sonoma County.
Lucas’ attorney, Omar Figueroa, rebutted the prosecution’s claim that his client posted on social media about Brodd or shared his address.
“She would never do that,” Figueroa said. “Amber looks forward to her day in court. She has a clean record and maintains her innocence.”
Aumoithe’s attorney, Barrientos, said in the May statement that he believed the evidence would show the vandalism was “the work of an agent provocateur.”
Dalbey is represented by prominent San Francisco attorney Tony Serra, who has told The Chronicle that police had scant evidence against his client.