The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Arbery mural defaced in San Diego; artist vows fixes
Its creator says he’s surprised mural not damaged till now.
SAN DIEGO — A mural in North Park depicting Ahmaud Arbery, whose shooting death in Georgia resulted in a trial in which three men were convicted of murder, has been defaced.
It is unclear when the portrait of Arbery on the boarded-up windows of the shuttered Pekin Cafe Chop Suey restaurant on University Avenue was defaced with light pink paint, which covered parts of the artwork.
San Diego police Lt. Adam Sharki, a spokesperson, said the department became aware of the paint after a Union-Tribune reporter asked about it Tuesday. Sharki said no one had reported the incident.
Pamuela Halliwell, a North Park resident and president of the San Diego Black LGBTQ Coalition, said she noticed the damage while she was driving home from work last weekend.
“It startled me instantly,” said Halliwell, who pulled over and took a photo of the defaced mural, which she shared on social media.
“It’s disgusting, it’s disgraceful, it’s disappointing and completely disrespectful of the fact that (Arbery) was killed by these three people who had no business interacting with him in the first place.”
Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man, was chased and fatally shot by three white South Georgia residents on Feb. 23, 2020, after they saw him jogging outside. Greg McMichael and son Travis McMichael told police they suspected Arbery was a fleeing burglar, but a jury convicted the men and a neighbor, William “Roddie” Bryan, of murder last month.
Halliwell noted that Black Lives Matter banners at Rich’s nightclub and University Christian Church in Hillcrest were defaced in February.
“It really speaks to the hate that’s still within our communities,” she said.
After the San Diego Police Department learned about the damage to the mural, officers contacted the property owners, who did not want police to pursue a criminal investigation, Sharki said.
Jonny Pucci, the artist who painted the mural, said he plans to restore the artwork after he returns from a trip to Italy. Pucci said that, as sad as it was to say, he was surprised the mural had not been damaged previously.
“Given the state of the nation, I’m really surprised that it’s lasted this long,” the 35-year-old artist and North Park resident said.
He said several strangers contacted him on Instagram in recent days to alert him to the damage. Many were angry.
“I am not angry,” Pucci said. “It doesn’t make me angry; it just disappoints me. How is it somebody sees a painting of somebody that was murdered, with a message that says, ‘Spread love,’ and they say, ‘No, I don’t like it’?”
The mural also includes a portrait of Breonna Taylor, who was fatally shot by Louisville, Kentucky, police in her apartment March 13, 2020, after her boyfriend fired at officers, who had a no-knock warrant and burst into the home. Around the portrait of Taylor are the words, “Respect life.”
Pucci painted the mural in the days after the May 25, 2020, murder of George Floyd, whose death at the hands of former Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin sparked nationwide protests, and renewed calls for racial justice and police reform.
At the time many businesses in San Diego — and across the nation — were boarded up. Pucci asked several business owners if he could paint a mural on their plywood, but several said they didn’t want to display a political statement, Pucci said.
Then he came across the Chop Suey restaurant. Pucci painted the portraits over the course of two days, at times while protesters walked by. They would tell him his work was important and would thank him, he said.
“I just really wanted to do something because the whole movement was really important to me, and I wanted to just give my voice and support in whatever way I could,” Pucci said.
The incident is not the first time Pucci’s artwork was defaced. He said someone wrote a racial slur with a Sharpie on his mural of the late Mayor Taylor, a Black U.S. cycling legend, in Denver.