SAN ANTONIO – A famous marble memorial at the Alamo has streaks of red paint after police say a tagger left a mark there on the cenotaph and in several other places downtown overnight.
Officers were called around midnight to the Alamo Plaza after receiving reports of someone having written anti-white supremacy messages.
When police arrived, they found graffiti on the cenotaph and more graffiti in the 100 block of Losoya, on the side of a parking structure that belongs to the Hyatt hotel. Another site is on a sidewalk at Travis Park, officials said. A third message, visibly seen on a Travis Park sidewalk, is just four letters, a known acronym for the hate of police officers.
San Antonio police confirmed that they arrested one suspect, 25-year-old Noah Benjamin Escamilla, on suspicion of graffiti for one of the messages found on Travis Street.
“However, we have not linked this (suspect) to the other incidents as we are actively investigating each case,” a police spokesperson stated in an email.
An officer said that a message on the statue of Alamo defender Toribio Losoya appeared to be more of a threat than the tagging on the base of the cenotaph, the memorial which features the names and sculptures of other Alamo defenders.
Staff members for the Hyatt hotel early Friday were working to erase the graffiti.
It is unclear if Alamo cameras may have captured any images of the person or persons responsible.
This is a developing story. Stay with KSAT12 both online and on-air for more information.