Community comes together to restore defaced mural

What once was a white wall on the back of Del Sol Market, is now a colorful mural.

Over the weekend, that mural was defaced with racial slurs.

The custom mural of a mermaid with desert and jungle influences was painted by artist , Adry Del R ocio in November.

In the short time of it being completed, the community had to see it be defaced.

It was not long before people came together to restore its beauty.

According to Yuma Police Department, the incident occurred between Friday at 10 P.M. and Saturday at 7 A.M.

An unknown person or persons painted racial remarks and symbols representative of white supremacy groups.

Joel Magana, the manager of Del Sol Market was the first one to notice the graffiti when he came into work Saturday morning.

“Saturday morning when I got here to work I go around the building and I noticed the graffiti on the wall. I am assuming it happened between the hours of Friday night and we closed after 10 pm and in the morning when I got here around 7 o’clock in the morning,” he said.

Magana says it makes him sad that this had to happen in such a short time of the mural being finished.

“It’s very unfortunate I mean it’s sad to see it happen the actual painter they came out and took a lot of time to do it and for someone to come in deface it in such a short period of time it’s sad,” he said.

Though Magana has had to deal with graffiti before, he has never seen anything like this.

“I’ve had graffiti gang graffiti and like this type of graffiti before this is my first time is I see it as far as a racial type thing,” he said.

On the day of the incident, many customers and community members were asking Magana if he needed help fixing the mural.

Word got out to Lindsay Benacka, arts and culture program manager at the Yuma Art Center who, along with others showed up to remove the graffiti.

“I’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback saying we’ll help you out as much as we can. we were out here me and the officer were out here taking the report and as people went by I guess it automatically went out to social media and F acebook and before you knew it I had cars stopping by and asking if we needed help painting or cleaning up” Magana said.

On Saturday, Adry posted a photo on Facebook thanking the community for coming together to fix her mural.

Adry also posted on Facebook saying “I know we are many more people who want to live in a better world, and as I have always believed, small changes in our daily work can make a big difference, no matter our country, community, family.”