Missoula Mont: Several local businesses in downtown Missoula were tagged with graffiti over the past couple days.
“It was astonishing. I was definitely disappointed, not surprised at this rate by also highly disgruntled,” said Madeline Stephenson, a store associate at Import Market.
Import Market along with many other local businesses in downtown Missoula like Missoula Club, Grizzly Liquor, Monks, and Bodega have recently been marked with similar designed graffiti. This has been an ongoing problem for the past couple of years, particularly for Bodega. The employees at the bar said they have been tagged multiple times over the past 4 years with similar graffiti designs.
According to the Missoula Police Department, there have also been businesses vandalized on the interior, like in bathrooms, making the list of tagged buildings even longer.
These vandalisms have been frustrating for businesses and they wish these individuals would avoid targeting local companies.
“If they wanted to tag something so badly, then why did they have to go against the bread and butter of our local economy? That to me makes absolutely no sense,” said Stephenson.
The Missoula P.D. has assigned a detective to investigate the vandalisms. They believe these incidents were all done by the same person based off the reoccurring tag but have not ruled out additional offenders. They are looking at graffiti tags done as far back as December 2022 to try and narrow down the suspect.
If you have any information on the recent vandalisms in downtown Missoula, please call the Missoula police department at (406) 552-2630.