Raleigh auto shop ransacked, covered in racist graffiti

MEMPHIS, Tenn. – A Raleigh auto shop owner spent Monday cleaning up after he says his business was ransacked and covered with racist graffiti. The ‘n-word’ was painted multiple times on the floors and walls at the Level Up detail shop on Elmore. Sometimes it accompanied phrases like, ‘Leave, we don’t want you here n-word’ or ‘n-word lover.’ The ‘n-word’ was also written on the hood of a car. “This was a cowardly act by cowardly people,” said owner Damien Wyatt. Wyatt said the shop was in shambles when he walked in Monday morning. Several computer monitors had been smashed with a hammer and a number of items were missing. This includes a white Infiniti, the shop’s surveillance system as well as a number of electronics. “If you were gonna rob me, then why do all of this and if you hated me that bad then why not completely destroy the place?” Wyatt worries the culprits might be people he knows because of one of the racist slurs he believes alludes to his interracial marriage. “They put ‘n-word lover’ on the door in reference to my wife so it definitely feels like somebody that at least knows about us,” he said. He said the most hurtful part about the whole experience was when his wife had to explain what these slurs meant to his two young sons. “They don’t see color like that. They haven’t been brought up like that and to have somebody force us to have this conversation with them because of this is — that’s angering.”