Last week, a family member who paid for the memorial chair to be placed on Applecross Foreshore noticed it had been covered in graffiti.
‘We were down there days earlier showing family members and it was fine but when we went back yesterday, it was covered (in graffiti),’ he said.
‘Another chair close by was also covered with graffiti.
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The local resident said the City of Melville installed the chair on the Applecross Foreshore in 2010 and people used it everyday.
‘It’s quite a good idea having the memorial chairs, and we enjoy seeing people using it and reading the plaque,’ he said.
‘However we are very disappointed someone would come and vandalise it.’
‘We removed it the next morning. We went down to Bunnings to buy some paint remover and scrubbed it off.’
In February, another memorial chair was vandalised on Wireless Hill.
John Firth, of Applecross, and his family have been visiting his father’s memorial chair at least once a month since his father Tom Firth passed away in 2005, but when he returned to the chair earlier that month, it was full of graffiti and dried out.
The City said it was aware of the incident reported earlier this year, but not the current incident, and urged the community to report any graffiti they see.
‘While our community safety service team provide patrols and monitoring across the City, they cannot be everywhere, so we do rely heavily on the community to be our eyes and ears, and report graffiti vandalism to us, which we can then follow-up,’ Mayor Russell Aubrey said.
He said the maximum penalty for graffiti was two years jail or a $24,000 fine.