FORSYTH COUNTY, Ga. — A Forsyth County man is out of jail after being arrested in Florida for putting chalk on a crosswalk outside the Pulse nightclub memorial.
Crews painted over the rainbow crosswalk in Orlando last week following a federal order to remove crosswalk art nationwide. Since then, people have traveled to the site to write messages in chalk to honor the 49 victims killed in the 2016 mass shooting.
Sebastian Suarez, of Cumming, said he went to the nightclub memorial with his fiancée on Friday while visiting Orlando for his birthday.
“August 29 is my birthday. Um, that was the day we got here. That’s the day we went out. The day I got arrested, the whole nine yards,” Suarez told Channel 2’s Eryn Rogers.
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He said after dinner they went to see the memorial. “I know they have a big mural,” he said. Suarez said he saw people chalking the crosswalk after the rainbow had been removed.
“I essentially got a piece of chalk and just kind of rubbed it on the bottom of my shoe,” he said. “It was bright pink, right? Um, I took a couple steps across the way.”
Video shows a Florida Highway Patrol trooper calling Suarez over and leading him to a patrol car. “He said ‘Hey, you’re being arrested’ and slams the door,” Suarez said.
Suarez said he spent 19 hours in jail waiting for a judge to rule on probable cause. “It was a real rough time. I can’t lie, it was not the way I wanted to spend my birthday,” he said.
Blake Simons with The Simons Law Firm is Suarez’s attorney and took the case pro bono. He argued the crosswalk is an extension of the sidewalk, which has historically been a public forum space.
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“That place is meant to remember those people, and when we lose our right to free speech, when they get erased and painted over, and then we get accused of criminal mischief or interfering with traffic because we want to lay some light and lay some remembrance for these people we’ve lost out of our community, it’s just it’s just absurd,” Simons said. “It infringes on our speech. It wastes our taxpayers’ dollars. We can’t stand to let our speech be impeded like that…Their focus is grotesquely misplaced.”
He pointed to another mass shooting earlier this week in Minnesota. “It’s not chalk on a crosswalk. It’s the gun violence that causes us to need to memorialize these instances and these lives that are lost,” Simons said.
Simons said they are considering pursuing legal action for Suarez because he believes Suarez’s First Amendment rights were violated.
Suarez was released on his own personal recognizance.
Atlanta also has a rainbow crosswalk on 10th Street and Piedmont Avenue. However, city leaders said that one will remain because it’s on city streets paid for with city funds, and the federal directive to remove crosswalk art only applies to federal or state-funded roads.
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