Ring camera catches someone breaking, removing Pride signs from Round Rock home
AUSTIN (KXAN) – Sal Stow lives with her partner, Meghan, in Round Rock. She said she took her dog out for a walk Saturday morning, but when Stow returned home, she noticed something was wrong.
“Immediately, I was angry,” she said. “I went to our ring cameras to look to see what happened.”
What she saw unsettled her – two people dressed in strange clothing, faces covered with masks, defacing signs they displayed on their lawn for Pride month.
The video shows one person walking up to their door, grabbing a sign and breaking it over their knee. That person then turned around, grabbed another sign and ran away from Stow’s home. The second person waited by a golf cart, which they both used to flee.
One of the signs removed reads “Round Rock Pride,” and the other: “Pride Lives Here.”
“It's unnerving,” Stow said. “And it adds a little bit of fear because this is the first time somebody's come and done something of this nature all the way to the front door.”
While this is the first time someone has gone to their front door to remove signs, it is unfortunately not the first time the couple’s home has been targeted, Stow said.
“We've had over the last few years a number of flags stolen,” Stow said. “My partner was verbally abused [and] threatened by somebody while she was out in the front yard,” she continued.
These previous incidents partially motivated them to install several cameras on their property which captured the incident on Saturday, Stow told KXAN. The couple is filing a police report with the Round Rock Police.
“What if I had been going out the front door at that moment in time?” she asked. “I shouldn't fear having to go out into my own front yard for what I might face or what I might encounter. I'm just as much legally living here as anybody else is.”
While Stow said she is hurt by this incident, she’s not going to let these people intimidate her into concealing her identity.
“People say, ‘Well, why do you need Pride Month?’,” Stow said. “We are still fighting to have the same rights as a heterosexual person.”
“We've not done anything to anybody other than be who we are. And I'm proud to be who I am. And I'm not going to shy away from being that,” she continued.