Police officers from Ingleside Station last night arrested the alleged serial Mission Street mural vandal bystanders on Sunday filmed defacing a mural on Mission Street by deceased muralist Mario Cid Gonzalez. Witnesses said they observed a woman matching the suspect’s description defacing that mural months prior as well.
Yesterday’s arrest of 33-year-old Ana Da Costa Pereira came after the defacing of more murals, on Tuesday night: One of them adorns the side of the Excelsior District’s Central Drug Store at Mission and Santa Rosa streets.
Da Costa Pereira was booked into the San Francisco county jail for vandalism more than $400 and two counts of possession of graffiti instruments at 9:22 p.m. last night.
Police claim that Da Costa Pereira is responsible for multiple incidents of mural vandalism up and down Mission Street.
An email sent by police to Mission Local noted that officers today visited the defaced Mission Street mural that was the subject of a Tuesday Mission Local article: “Through the course of investigation the officers were able to identify the suspect who they discovered was arrested by SFPD Officers from Ingleside Station.”
Officers from Mission Station placed additional felony and misdemeanor charges on her while she was in custody at the county jail.
Onlookers who filmed the defacing of the Mission Street mural on Sunday claim that Da Costa Pereira also vandalized it months prior. Witness Antonio Barrera told Mission Local that when he called police months ago to report that incident he was told “that the police could only do something if a unit happened to be driving by while a person was committing the crime.” He felt he had been dissuaded from making a report unless an emergency was taking place, and did not call police after filming the mural’s Sunday defacement.
Jim Coursey, a resident in the Excelsior, was one of the people who claims to have witnessed Da Costa Pereira defacing the Central Drug mural on the night of Dec. 17.
Coursey said he was on his way to pick up food from nearby Salvadorian restaurant Familiar across Mission from the pharmacy at around 7:20 p.m. when he saw Da Costa Pereira painting on the mural.
At first, Coursey thought that she was an artist making a fix to her work but then noticed that Da Costa Pereira was not painting “particularly well” and the “fix” looked “a bit haphazard.” After he picked up dinner and was on his way back, Coursey realized that Da Costa Pereira was simply painting over the original art.
“I asked her what she was doing and she didn’t respond,” Coursey recalled. “And she just started packing up.” Coursey said he then “shooed her away” and watched her walking up north along Mission Street.
Coursey recalled following her for a block until Da Costa Pereira was setting up again at Francis and Mission streets, ready to paint again, when Coursey shooed her away again. “She was sort of retreating, staring at me,” Coursey said. “She never spoke the entire time.”
“I was upset,” said Jerry Tonelli, the 70-year-old owner and pharmacist at the century-old Central Drug Store. Tonelli said police officers came into the store this morning and informed him that they’d arrested the suspect.
But for Tonelli, that can’t change the fact that the mural has already been defaced
The colorful mural — named “The San Francisco You Should Know” and done by mural art center Precita Eyes artists Jason Gilmore and Cory Calandra-Devereaux — has been on the wall outside of Central Drug Store since 2009, quietly telling the history of the Excelsior District with landmarks such as the old streetcar that used to carry workers and families in the neighborhood, a portrait of Jerry Garcia playing the guitar and singing, the original Corpus Christi church and Balboa High School.
But now, a big part of the mural has been covered in white and dark brown spray paint.
“The wall used to be graffitied a lot until the mural was put up. We were one of the first businesses that put a mural up,” Tonelli recalled, while holding the original sketch of the mural in both of his hands. To this day, he still keeps the long, rolled-up, and wrinkly sketch in the back of the store. “This mural is part of the Excelsior history.”
This is a breaking news story and will be updated as possible.
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