MIAMI (WSVN) - A Miami couple spent their evening painting over several Nazi symbols that were spray-painted at a bus stop near a busy intersection.
7News cameras captured Naomi Alzate and her fiancé as they covered up the anti-Semitic images plastered on and near the bus stop in the area of Biscayne Boulevard and Northeast 77th Street, Monday evening.
Alzate did not mince words about how she feels.
“This stuff is not OK,” she said.
Alzate has lived in this section of Miami for three years. When the couple saw the disturbing red markings, they grabbed some white paint and went to work.
“We call this area home, and this type of stuff is unacceptable to us,” said Alzate.
The diagonal lines stand for the SS, Adolf Hitler’s paramilitary organization in the Nazi Party. Their purpose was to protect the German dictator and kill Jewish people during the Holocaust.
The vandalism is the latest in a string of similar defacings spotted across South Florida.
Last week, cellphone video captured a van covered with anti-Semitic words and messages in downtown Miami.
“I couldn’t believe anybody could even have that written on a car. It just seems so – just such a belligerence and so terrible,” said Todd Amelung-Wilson, the man who recorded the video.
Back in April, Coral Gables Police arrested Benjamin Garcia after he allegedly marked a construction site with the phrase “Communism is Judaism.” He faces multiple counts of criminal mischief and vandalism.
As for the graffiti at the bus stop, professional cleaners showed up hours later to remove the images.
Alzate hopes her quick thinking will inspire others who may come across symbols like this.
“That’s the whole point, right? If we each do what we can when we see that things aren’t correct, that’s how things will change,” she said.
Police have not provided further details about who may have spray-painted the symbols, as they continue to investigate.
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