At first, Oye Owolewa was annoyed, but not too concerned, when he noticed this blue spray paint on his front door.
But then he walked outside, looked down and saw the letters “FU” spray painted on his front porch.
“That’s when I saw the full display of the letters and the cursing,” Owolewa said.
Owolewa is running for a D.C. Council at-large seat, and he currently serves as the District’s shadow representative — an unpaid position voted for by District residents to advocate for D-C statehood. So he’s someone who’s known publicly, but he says he isn’t sure why someone would target him.
“I’ve been here for about seven years. and nothing like this has ever happened,” he said. “[…] If you notice in this neighborhood, all the houses look the same. Doors are the same color, or one off of it, but my house was the only one that was targeted, only one that was spray painted ‘FU,’ the only one of all people. In this kind of neighborhood, I can only assume it’s because of who I am.”
Owolewa told News4 he believes this happened Friday night, but he didn’t notice it until Saturday. He has a security camera outside his front door but says it isn’t working – a repair that he says he plans on taking care of soon.
Owolewa says he hopes this is just a one-time thing, or possibly a prank, and not something that escalates.
“What’s going through my head is that these types of actions are coming to my front door. Literally,” he said. “[…] So we gotta grab some nail polish remover, some red paint and we’re going to figure out how to fix this up because I obviously don’t want this to stay in my house for the long term.”
Owolewa says he filed a police report. D.C. police said it’s looking into the incident but no arrests have been made at this time.
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