A 40-year-old man used a sledgehammer and pickaxe to smash the Walk of Fame star in Hollywood bearing Donald Trump's name.

The Walk of Fame is a tourist attraction created in the 1950s containing more that 2500 stars embedded into the pavement. Each star bears the name of an important personage in the entertainment industry in America.

Trump received his star in 2007 as a result of the successful TV show "The Apprentice" in which he starred.

The person who destroyed the star did it in front of surveillance cameras and did not hide his identity. He identified himself as James Otis and said that he intended to remove the star and sell it and then to use the money to benefit the 11 women who accuse Trump of indecent behavior towards them years ago - an accusation which Trump has vehemently denied.

Otis said that five of his relatives had been sexually assaulted by others and that he was "terribly upset" at the thought that Trump might be elected president.

Trump's opponents describe him as a "sexual predator" while his supporters claim that the accusations are intentionally overstated or invented by the media in order to enable the Democratic candidate, Hilary Clinton, to evade criticism of her own corruption and attitude to assaulted women as well as the sexual behavior of her husband.