Car tagged ‘KKK’ set afire in Vacaville
When a white Mercedes was spray-painted with the letters “KKK” and set aflame on a residential street in Vacaville on Monday, the first reaction of some residents was not sympathy, but skepticism.
“We’ve had community members come forward saying, ‘Are you sure it’s not insurance fraud? Are you sure it’s not someone posing as a victim, committing vandalism and arson to their own vehicle?’ ” said Lt. Matt Lydon, a spokesman for the Vacaville Police Department, on Wednesday. “But we don’t believe this is anywhere close to the case.
“We believe this person has been the victim of a hate crime,” he said.
Police are not releasing the race of the victim for fear of retaliation, but investigators say they don’t believe there was any other motivation for the crime.
“The owner of the car hasn’t had any problems with anyone in the neighborhood and doesn’t know why the car was targeted,” police said in a statement.
Officers responded to reports of a vehicle fire around 9 p.m. Monday on William Street, a road lined with singlefamily homes near downtown Vacaville, according to police.
They found the car “completely engulfed in flames,” police said in a statement, with the letters “KKK” scrawled across the passengerside doors of the sedan.
No arrests have been made.
About 54 percent of the city’s population of 95,000 is white, and about 10 percent is black, according to the latest figures from the U.S. Census Bureau.
“In Vacaville, there have been a couple of documented hate crimes in 2017, but nothing as specifically targeted as this,” Lydon said.
Filipa Ioannou is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: fioannou@ sfchronicle.com Twitter: @obioannoukenobi