CHATSWORTH, Ga. — The Chatsworth Police Department made an arrest on Halloween night of a woman they said matched witness descriptions of someone stealing campaign signs of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. 

But the woman — a 26-year-old Dalton State College biology major who hopes one day to be a veterinarian — says she was simply walking her 13-year-old sister back from a church Halloween party and isn’t a political person.

Marlys Cristina Vincente of West Oak Street in Chatsworth was charged with criminal trespass after police said witnesses identified her as stealing Trump campaign signs. But Vincente said other than going to get her sister from the party, she didn’t leave the house and hasn’t paid a lot of attention to the presidential campaign.

“I don’t have any political views at all,” Vincente said. “I didn’t even know what I was being charged with until I got out and they told me it was criminal trespass. Before that, when the police were at my house, they told me I was being accused of robbery.”

According to the incident report from the Chatsworth Police Department, officers were sent to the area of North Sixth Avenue and Chestnut Street after someone called and claimed there were “two individuals throwing rocks at vehicles and destroying election signs in yards.” The caller said one was wearing a red shirt. The report does not say which property that signs were taken from, but the police said they found Trump signs in front of a church. 

While speaking to people in the church, police were approached by an unnamed witness. The report says the witness told police “he had seen two females tearing up signs and described one having a red shirt …” Jimmy Pence, who spoke to The Daily Citizen and is listed as one of four witnesses on the report, said there was more than just two people. 

“They were walking down the sidewalk and it looked like four or five kids kicking signs,” Pence said. “They saw us and acted like they weren’t doing anything until we drove past them and then they went back and picked it up and took it across the road. I thought it was just kids being kids.”

Pence and his wife are listed as witnesses, along with a resident from Diamond Way who did not have a phone number indicated on the report.

While officers were at the church, another witness whose name was redacted from the report, indicating the witness was a juvenile, told officers “she knew who had taken the signs and thrown the rocks,” according to the report. Officers went to the Vincente house on West Oak where Marlys Vincente lives with her parents and siblings. She walked out wearing a red shirt. 

The report says three times officers asked if she had left the residence and both Vincente and her sister denied leaving the house, and then admitted to going to the church earlier. Officers wrote that a witness — again unidentified — arrived and identified Vincente as “one of the individuals” taking signs but said they couldn’t positively identify her sister “because they had different pants on.”

Vincente said her family didn’t give out trick-or-treat candy that night and she thought she was going to be dealing with trick-or-treaters when she answered the door. Instead, there was a police officer in her yard. 

“As soon as I opened the door, the police were out there, and he said, ‘You! Step outside!’” she said. “He already seemed like he was mad. He asked me if I had gone out tonight, and I told him no. He went back to his car, and that was when I realized I had went to the church earlier to pick up my sister.”

She said she had no idea what she was being questioned about.

“He said I was being accused of robbery, and I knew I hadn’t stolen anything,” she said. “They were telling me that I had lied to them and they didn’t believe me. My sister told him we hadn’t done anything and he looked at a 13-year-old girl and said, ‘Are you willing to go to jail for her?’”

Vincente said she would have had to go out of her way to find any Trump signs in her neighborhood. 

“Where we live, there are no signs by that church unless you go to Long Avenue,” she said. “It takes about a five-minute walk, I went to the church and came back and that is it.” 

Vincente is expected to have a court date on the misdemeanor offense later this month.