Eddie Curlin, a Black man, has been arrested for spray painting racist graffiti on Eastern Michigan University’s campus over a six-month period.
He was identified as the culprit responsible for a large KKK on one building and ‘Leave N*ggers’ on another. Eddie was already in custody for an unrelated charge when police determined he was responsible (which we find to be an interesting coincidence) and school officials haven’t really given a motive.
via NYDN:
The three incidents happened in September and October 2016 along with another this spring, sparking outrage throughout the school, located just southwest of Ann Arbor.
Campus police didn’t have much information until Wednesday, when the 29-year-old Curlin was arraigned in Washtenaw County District Court, according to a news release from the school.
Curlin — who attended Eastern Michigan from 2014 to early 2016 — was already in custody, serving a one-to-five jail sentence on unrelated stolen property charges, the release indicates. He was sentenced in that case in August, according to the Detroit Free Press.
The school noted campus police spent 1,080 hours on the investigation, reviewing 1,200 hours of surveillance video and conducting more than 60 interviews. The FBI and Michigan State Police chipped in to help.
The release didn’t indicate how the probe eventually led them to charge Curlin with malicious destruction of property, identity theft and using computers to commit a crime.
Nor did school officials dive deeply into a motive.
“It was totally self-serving, it was not driven by politics and it was not driven by race,” campus police Chief Robert Heighes told the Eastern Echo school newspaper. “It was an individual item done by one individual for all three major graffiti incidents on our campus.”
Heighes told local media the identity theft charge wasn’t tied to the graffiti, but arose during the investigation.
A university spokesman didn’t immediately return a request for comment.
In September 2016, “KKK” was spray painted in red, white and blue on a campus dorm. Below read: “Leave n—–s.”
Another piece of graffiti laden with the N-word showed up on another building on Halloween 2016.
And a final act, which campus police say was connected, was inside a men’s bathroom stall.
“The incidents of vandalism on our campus created significant pain, fear and distress among our students, faculty and staff,” Eastern Michigan President James Smith said in a statement. “I joined with many of our community in my own personal anger over these incidents.”
The school had offered a $10,000 reward for anyone with information leading to an arrest, which reportedly won’t go to anyone.
Let’s hope they have the right guy.
