ORLANDO, Fla. – A mural dedicated to the victims of the 2016 mass shooting at Pulse nightclub was vandalized with white supremacists stickers.
The mural is located outside of The Center, an Orlando LGBTQ advocacy organization.
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“Our phone line has been down since yesterday in Orlando due to vandalism. We apologize for any inconvenience. We are still here to serve our community. We hope to have phone lines restored tomorrow. Thank you for your patience,” the LGBT+ Center Orlando wrote on Facebook.
The Center also confirmed to News 6 in an email additional “white supremacy stickers” were found on the building Saturday.
“We are actively updating our security to include the sidewalk and front of (the) building to deter any future acts of vandalism,” The Center Executive Director George Wallace wrote. “We want to promote that love always wins.”
A Reddit user noticed the stickers and shared pictures of the vandalism on the r/Orlando subreddit.
Images show a sticker from the group Patriot Front placed over the Pulse logo in the center of the mural.
“I was eating tacos next door to The Center (an LGBT organization) and wanted a photo of this mural. I took a picture then noticed something was covering the P. I walked up and it was a sticker of a man with a gun and an American flag type background,” the user wrote.
Patriot Front has been designated a “white nationalist hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
According to SPLC, Patriot Front formed in the aftermath of the deadly 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
According to Orlando Weekly, the sticker has been removed.
“We are sad to see any hate, especially in Orlando. Sadly, The Center’s Pulse mural had a sticker from a know White Supremacist group placed on it. Another sticker was found near the front of the building. We are unclear if the spray-painted tags and the phone/internet lines being cut are related but we are being vigilant. All of Orlando knows that hate never wins,” The Center wrote on Facebook.