Someone has been spray-painting profanity and racial slurs on buildings in Charleston — including a library named after a woman that Dylan Roof killed during his attack on a black church.
When staffers showed up to work at the Cynthia Hurd Library on Monday morning, they found racial slurs painted on the building and the walkway of the library.
The profanity targeted black women, whites, the police and the government.
“I don’t understand it,” Charlie Stricklin, a library regular, told CNN affiliate WCSC. “With all the problems going on in the world… You don’t need to do this. This is just not necessary.”
Two other nearby buildings — a home and an aquatic center — were also defaced over the weekend, police said.
Authorities don’t yet know whether the incidents are linked.
A longtime presence
The library, formerly called St. Andrews Regional Library, was renamed after Hurd following her death during Roof’s shooting spree at the Mother Emanuel AME Church in June 2015.
Hurd worked at the Charleston Public Library system for 31 years and managed the library, one of the county’s busiest.
“The vandalism that occurred at the Cynthia Graham Hurd/St. Andrew’s Regional Library is both unfortunate and sad,” County Council Chairman Vic Rawl said in a statement.
“There’s no place for this sort of deplorable act in our community. Our libraries are places of education and growth for children and we’ll assist law enforcement in any way possible.”
Roof was sentenced to death for the mass shooting.
