Barbara Mabry pulled back the curtain in the front window of her Greensburg home after a car stopped early Thursday and watched as someone vandalized a Black Lives Matter sign in her yard.
The person used orange spray paint to mark Xs on both sides of the sign that has stood outside her Barclay Street home for months. Coming within hours of the inauguration of President Joseph Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, Mabry said the vandalism surprised her.
“People in this area … we’re pretty respectful of differences of opinion, so this was unusual in our neighborhood,” Mabry said.
A couple blocks away on College Avenue, across from Seton Hill University, former county commissioner Tom Balya’s Biden-Harris sign also was defaced with orange spray paint.
“It’s ironic because I had two signs up in my yard and, a while ago, I decided I’d wait until they were sworn in before I would take them down,” he said. “I went for a walk yesterday and brought the one sign closest to the road in and said to myself, ‘Heck, I’ll bring the other one in Thursday morning.’
“I got up this morning and both sides were spray-painted with orange Xs. It’s sort of surprising because I’ve had them up since September and no trouble at all,” Balya said.
Greensburg Police Capt. Shawn Denning said about six signs, two for Black Lives Matter and four for Biden, were reported vandalized around 1:30 a.m. The vandalism occurred along College Avenue and Barclay and Clopper streets, police said.
“We were able to get obtain a video, but all you could see was that it was an older, dark-colored Buick or Chevrolet sedan with a sunroof. Someone, it was just a silhouette, got out of the passenger side of the vehicle and ran up and defaced the sign,” Denning said.
Mabry said she provided police with a video she took on her cellphone.
“But it was too dark to make anything out except that … someone got out of the passenger side to do the damage,” she said.
Balya said the vandals did not deter the joy of the inauguration for him.
“No, not at all,” he said.
Mabry agreed. She attached a homemade sign to the defaced one. It had an arrow pointing to the vandalism and noted “Black Lives DO Matter.”
She also ordered 10 more signs, and five neighbors called her after hearing about the damage.
“They told me they intend to post signs in their yards, too,” she said.
Anyone with information on the vandalism can call police at 724-834-3800.
