Ridgeleigh Residents Restore 'Hate Speech' Defaced Sign

After a welcome sign was defaced with what one Ridgeleigh Community Association member called "hate speech" in spray paint, the community quickly banded together to restore the sign.

Ridgeleigh Community Association vice president Mike Kaspar said the Ridgeleigh community sign near the corner of Yakona and Oakleigh roads was defaced overnight on May 29.

The vandal also used brown spray paint to mark a stop sign on Yakona Road and a traffic sign on Oakleigh Road, Kaspar said. A home under renovation near the corner of Yakona and Oakleigh roads was also defaced.

Kaspar said the vandal used hate speech including a racial slur, and also painted swastikas, an upside-down cross and the numbers 666.

"It's alarming ... no one wants the N-word spray painted on their sign. [The vandal] also painted 666, an upside-down cross, a big old swastika in the middle of it," Kaspar said. "We’d like to put out a reward if anyone knows who did it."

"We’d like to nip this in the bud, maybe the kid bragged about it, maybe someone will recognize the handwriting," he said. "That sign had been recently redone within two years, it wasn’t cheap. The whole idea is we’re trying to keep the community looking nice and inviting."

See a photo of the defaced sign and the newly restored sign attached to this article.

The good news, Kaspar said, is that Ridgeleigh residents quickly organized to remedy the problem.

"We used social media and got it resolved," Kaspar said.

The community has a page on the site NextDoor with about 200 members, and as soon as word got out there that the sign had been defaced one neighbor, Ron Long, jumped into action.

"Within a couple of hours, it was back, looking as if it had never been touched."

Kaspar asked that anyone with information about the defaced sign contact him at vicepresident@ridgeleigh.net.