White Couple Identified, Charged With Hate Crime For Vandalizing ‘Black Lives Matter’ Mural

A cou­ple from California has been charged with a hate crime after they were caught on video on July 4^th defac­ing a Black Lives Matter mur­al in the city of Martinez. 42-year old Nicole Anderson and 53-year old David Nelson were seen paint­ing over the word “Black,” which had been paint­ed in yel­low, with black paint.

Both of them were wear­ing red shirts, but David’s shirt had Trump’s name on it with the expres­sion “Four More Years”.
“We’re sick of this nar­ra­tive, that’s what’s wrong,” David said in the video, accord­ing to ABC News. “The nar­ra­tive of police bru­tal­i­ty, the nar­ra­tive of oppres­sion, the nar­ra­tive of racism, it’s a lie.”
Some bystanders can be heard in the back­ground of the video telling them to stop, say­ing that what they’re doing is racist. At one point, Nicole even paused what she was doing and said murals like that should only be done in New York, adding, “This is not hap­pen­ing in my town.”

For about five min­utes, David yelled “All lives mat­ter,” to which one of the bystanders respond­ed, “Until Black lives mat­ter, no lives mat­ter.” The two were gone when the police arrived at the scene. They only found a wit­ness who took a pic­ture of the sus­pects’ car, which was described as a Nissan pick­up truck with the word “NICOLE” paint­ed in sil­ver. An inves­ti­ga­tion led to their arrest and the charges.
“The com­mu­ni­ty spent a con­sid­er­able amount of time putting the mur­al togeth­er only to have it paint­ed over in a hate­ful and sense­less man­ner,” Chief Manjit Sappal of the Martinez Police Department said in a state­ment. “The City of Martinez val­ues tol­er­ance and the dam­age to the mur­al was divi­sive and hurtful.”