A Black Los Angeles family spoke out after vandals left several racist, threatening messages on their home and cars on Halloween night.
Elizabeth Garbutt said she woke up the morning after Halloween to find the slur-laden messages spray-painted on her family home, two cars, and the sidewalk in front of her house.
“One of the messages on the sidewalk was ‘n— die.’ That’s the one that really just touched me,” Garbutt told Fox 11 Los Angeles. “I moved over to my car. It said ‘dumb n—.’ Then we moved on to the next one. One says ‘n— house.’ The next one said, ‘die.’ The gate says ‘dumb n—.’ And the spelling is not even correct.”
Garbutt stated her family has lived in the View Park area of L.A., which is nestled between Inglewood and Crenshaw, since 1990 and has never been the target of a hate crime.
“I’ve been living here since she was a baby … 35 years,” Garbutt’s daughter, Elyse, said. “And to be afraid to be in your own house, that’s not a good thing. It’s very stressful. I don’t understand why. Why our house was the reason.”
The vandals eluded nearby surveillance systems and targeted areas where security cameras weren’t pointed. After snapping photos of the graffiti, the Garbutts cleaned it off their property. Only the message on the sidewalk remains.
“My whole body just shut down. I had no means for words. All I could do was cry,” Elizabeth Garbutt said.
“There needs to be some type of change within our community,” Elyse said. “We’re about to be in 2025, and this is devastating that we’re still dealing with these type of things. We’re all human. All bleed the same.”
The family filed a police report, hoping that authorities would track down the culprits. They are working to contact the mayor’s office about the incident.
