More than 18 months after spray-painted pizza slices started turning up outside Westchester restaurants, New Rochelle police say they have identified a graffiti culprit.
They arrested Daniel Henderson last week, but said the investigation is ongoing into what they called the “OneSlicePlease” movement that took off on social media.
Henderson, 42, of Yonkers, was charged with three misdemeanor counts of making graffiti.
The graffiti generally included bright, cheesy pizza slices on exterior walls of pizzerias and other restaurants, often with a tagged salute to the name of the establishment.
Police said 13 restaurants were tagged in New Rochelle and they were coordinating their investigation with 14 other jurisdictions where restaurants were hit with similar vandalism.
Westchester’s pizza graffiti later promoted charitable website
The initial wave of graffiti in April and May 2023 included just the pizza slices outside restaurants in New Rochelle, Eastchester, Tuckahoe and Pelham. But later vandalism added “@ONESLICEPLEASE” or “1SLICEPLEASE.COM.”
The website 1sliceplease.com offers an 11 by 17 art print of a cheesy slice for $75 and a framed original painting for $3,000. It promised to use a “large portion of the proceeds” to buy pizzas from the tagged businesses and give them to homeless shelters and soup kitchens.
“I want to show what most thought was a negative situation that it’s a positive movement,” the website read.
At the time the graffiti was appearing, restauranteurs whose establishments got tagged didn’t know what to make of it.
“I mean, if this is going to be like a tag for pizza restaurants, I feel like it’s pretty cool,” Sebastian Aliberti, general manager at Modern Restaurant & Lounge, told The Journal News/lohud. “I feel like New Rochelle has been trying to become artsy, and it’s not in a terrible spot, so I don’t have anything negative to say about it.”
Henderson could not be reached and the name of a lawyer representing him was not immediately available.
Court information was not available.
Henderson could face up to a year in the county jail and a fine of up to $1,000 — or what it would cost for 34 1/2 Margherita pizzas with pepperoni and roasted peppers at Pizza La Rosa, one of the tagged establishments in New Rochelle.
This post was originally published on this site be sure to check out more of their content.
