Authorities in Sarasota, Fla., are investigating after someone early Tuesday morning vandalized an Unconditional Surrender statue — the famous moment of a sailor kissing a nurse at the end of WWII — with the spray-painted words “#MeToo.”
The incident was reported just after midnight and currently there is no suspect, Genevieve Judge, spokeswoman for the Sarasota Police Department, told The Hollywood Reporter.
#MeToo is also written in red spray paint on the nurse’s leg.
The previous day, George Mendonsa, the World War II veteran and sailor kissing a nurse in the famous image taken in New York on Aug. 14, 1945, died. He was 95.
The picture is one of the iconic moments in American history and was first published in Life magazine as a scene from “V-J Day in Times Square.”
The nurse was dental assistant Greta Zimmer Friedman, of Virginia, who died in 2016 at age 92.
As for the statue, the approximate damage is estimated to be more than $1,000 due to the large area the graffiti covers, police said.
The investigation is ongoing.
At approximately 12:53 am, our Officers were dispatched to the intersection of N Gulfstream Ave & Bayfront Dr reference to an unknown individual spray painting ‘# MeToo’ on the Unconditional Surrender statue. Additional information is at https://t.co/gv10lGhcja pic.twitter.com/JakU8aI7QY
— SarasotaPD (@SarasotaPD) February 19, 2019
