Alarming Graffiti Found On Downtown SLC Building, Quickly Cleaned Up
Dec 20, 2019, 6:45 PM | Updated: 6:49 pm
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah – Graffiti indirectly calling for an assassination was cleaned up after being painted on a downtown Salt Lake City building near an Interstate 15 offramp.
However, its message had a lot of people worried about just how far civil discourse in our country has fallen.
Scott Evans said graffiti is so common he doesn’t really even get upset anymore when he sees it while heading to work in Salt Lake City.
However, when he arrived at his business Friday morning, a fresh painting on the roof of the old Ballet West building near 300 West and 600 South had him feeling all shades of red.
“Never too late to assassinate,” he said while reading the same message on a building. “To me, that’s not okay.”
The graffiti as seen from 600 South in downtown Salt Lake City Friday morning.
Someone painted the indirect message sometime Thursday night or Friday morning.
However, Evans felt it was clear as to who it was intended for.
“To me, it has a political connotation that it means go kill the President,” he said.
Somebody put graffiti on a building in Salt Lake City saying “never 2 late 2 assassinate.” Graffiti removal teams are painting over it now. #ksltv pic.twitter.com/jB2wq5tQj8
— Alex Cabrero (@KSL_AlexCabrero) December 20, 2019
No matter what side of politics you side with, both sides might find common ground that this went too far.
“Insinuating that somebody ought to go shoot him is well beyond what, as a society, in my opinion, we should be willing to put up with,” Evans said.
Salt Lake City officials sure didn’t put up with it for long and by noon, a city graffiti removal crew was also on the roof.
In less than 20 minutes, fresh gray paint covered the graffiti so people coming off of I-15 onto 600 South, one of the busiest roads in Salt Lake City, wouldn’t see it anymore.
Officials with the Salt Lake City Mayor’s Office wouldn’t allow those crews to talk about how busy they have been painting over graffiti lately.
Fresh gray paint was quickly applied to cover the graffiti.
However, Evans said a fresh coat of paint isn’t nearly enough to hide just how divided the United States has become.
“We need a way to bring this country together,” he said. “We should be loving one another and working together to help one another.”
