Two white people are wanted for damaging a city-commissioned piece of street art highlighting the Black Lives Matter movement in Martinez, California, a city in Conta Costa County, multiple news sources have reported.
The city had commissioned the words “Black Lives Matter” to be painted in yellow letters on the street in front of the county courthouse, painted by members of the community as a show of support for equal justice for people of color.
A white man wearing a Trump campaign t-shirt and a white woman wearing a t-shirt bedecked with an American flag waited until the project was complete before spilling black paint on the lettering and trying to cover up the words with a paint roller.
“Keep this shit in fucking New York. This is not happening in my town,” the woman shouted as she tried to spread the paint.
The couple was chased off the scene within minutes of defacing the street art, with witnesses providing the license plate number and details of their vehicle to police. Volunteers then repaired the graphic.
Martinez is a city of 35,000 on the east side of San Francisco Bay. Its population is 77% white.