MESQUITE – After months of allegedly writing offensives messages on a city trail system, a Mesquite woman was arrested on a charge of defacing public property, according to police.
“Over the course of the last several months, the Police Department had been receiving complaints about rude and vulgar statements being written with sidewalk chalk on the Mesquite trail system,” Mesquite Police officials said in a press release Tuesday.
The alleged culprit, 61-year-old Mesquite resident Bonnie Kruder, was caught in the act by police on April 10, according to the press release.
Chalk-written statements attributed to Kruder were described as being “vulgar enough to offend those reading them” and usually related to politics and religion.
The authorities also considered the messages to be defacing public property.
An investigation was launched following the many complaints police received related to the offensive sidewalk-chalk graffiti. This ultimately led to police officers catching up with Kruder as she wrote yet another offensive message around 7:30 a.m., April 10.
Kruder was subsequently charged with a misdemeanor count of placing graffiti.
Additional graffiti charges are possible pending the completion of the investigation into the numerous other graffiti incidents, police said in the press release.
Persons arrested or charged are presumed innocent until found guilty in a court of law or as otherwise decided by a trier-of-fact.
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