It was a bunch of illegals looking for scrap. They probably pulled their bumper off trying to steal this and had to flee. Mexicans run the scrap-theiving business in California.
I think the possibility of anybody trying to steal this statue (which was only put up a month ago) for scrap is pretty remote. Even a bunch of illegals in an old beater would recognize that they would have a hard time selling it whole and probably couldn’t cut it up themselves.
This screams leftist vandalism to me. The statue probably got a lot of publicity when it was put up and this was their revenge.
That, or tweakers. Come to think of it, those are not mutually exclusive categories.