Officials, family decry defacement of mural honoring Philadelphia Police Sgt. Robert Willson III
PHILADELPHIA -- Family members and neighbors, police commanders, and city and state officials gathered Tuesday to condemn the vandalism done over the weekend to a Philadelphia mural honoring a police officer shot and killed during a robbery more than five years ago.
The mayor and police commissioner and a state senator were among those at the large mural in southwest Philadelphia honoring Sgt. Robert Wilson III, which the artist restored after acronyms for two anti-police slogans, as well as a symbol used by anarchists, were scrawled upon it.
"They don't know who my brother was," said Wilson's sister, Shaki'ra Wilson-Burroughs. "They don't know who he stands for. You ask anybody in this neighborhood who my brother was and they'll tell you."
Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw called the defacement "blatant disrespect."
The police union earlier announced a $10,000 reward for information leading to an arrest in the case. Last year, a similar reward was offered for information on the defacement of another mural honoring Wilson in the Strawberry Mansion section of northwest Philadelphia.
Wilson was shot to death in March 2015 at a GameStop store where he had gone to buy a video game for one of his children. He was killed while trying to stop a robbery while he was there.
Brothers Carlton Hipps, 32, and Ramone Williams, 28, were sentenced to life in prison with no parole, plus 50 to 100 years, in 2018 in a plea deal that spared them the death penalty, angering the police union and some of the officer's relatives.
