Truck that went viral now has new decal about Fort Bend County Sheriff

STAFFORD, Texas (FOX 26) - Earlier in the week, Karen Fonseca's truck went viral over social media when it was noticed that she had large decals on the back talking about her dislike for President Trump. Sunday, she and her husband Miguel added more stickers to it.

She says the Fort Bend County Sheriff Troy Nehls saw the truck or a picture of the truck and allegedly posted about it on social media. Days later Karen Fonseca was arrested on unrelated charges.

Now she and her husband have put up similar decals about the Sheriff on their truck. Sunday night the family spoke to media about their reasoning.

"We had been thinking about it and decided Troy Nelhs didn't think twice when we went ahead and put the Facebook post up and exposed me and my family. We are getting more positive than negative but at the same time I feel it was went about in the wrong way and the sticker fits appropriately," says Karen Fonseca.

"No one would really even know her name right now, but her family has been turned upside down and so I was disgusted like many of the hundreds of thousands if not millions of Americans out there", says state representative Ron Reynolds.

The sheriff's office did not initially comment on the matter on Sunday, but Sheriff Nehls released the following statement on Monday:

Last week, I received complaints from Fort Bend County residents regarding the window sticker on her truck, which states, “F*** Trump, and F*** You for voting for him.”  The residents informed me they were offended at the language displayed on the truck, and I asked for a photo. I received the photo of the truck with the sticker, but the photo failed to display the license plate number of the truck.

I asked my office to post the photo of the truck with the sticker on my “Sheriff Troy Nehls” Facebook page, and obscured the offensive language.  The intent behind the post was to identify the owner of the truck with the intent on speaking with that person(s) and have a conversation with the owner regarding the complaints I received and a possible modification of the sticker.  My post also included my office phone number.

As a result of the posting, we received information which helped us identify the owner of the truck. Once we identified the owner of the truck, we took down the post. As a result of the publicity, we also received information that Karen Fonseca was wanted on a Felony warrant pursuant to a grand jury indictment. 

Once we verified the outstanding warrant, steps were taken to serve the warrant.  This warrant was served in a professional manner and without publicity on the part of the Sheriff’s Office.  It is to be noted that the case surrounding this warrant was not one investigated by the Sheriff’s Office; we only served the Felony warrant.

The facts in this case as I see them are that Karen Fonseca wanted to place her feelings into the public realm by driving around with an obscenity on her vehicle.  She got just that -- much public recognition.  This recognition did not cause her to be indicted by a grand jury for Felony Fraud (this happened back in August of 2017), but it did bring the subsequent warrant to our attention and we did our job by arresting her.

In the beginning of this incident, I was hopeful that the person driving around with an obscenity for full view of all (including children) would be reasonable and would be willing to talk about coming to an agreed solution that satisfied her 1st Amendment rights while respecting the rights of parents and others offended by this display of an obscenity. 

Having heard her talk in the public since the beginning of this, I am now quite aware that no such hope for a calm and reasonable discussion exists with her.  This is sad and I hope that in the end she can come to see that just because citizens may have the legal right to do something, it does not always make it the right thing to do.

Neither I nor the Sheriff’s Office will be issuing further statements concerning this matter as it relates to these now past events as it only serves to bring added publicity to this display of obscenity.