Jordan Sanders was waiting for the bus Wednesday night when the headlight of a car illuminated several racist messages on the glass siding of an NFTA bus stop.
“All over the glass was ----- die here, nooses, images of stick figures being hung and I immediately broke down in tears,” 23-year-old Sanders told 7 Eyewitness News.
Sanders, a black man, says he’s only lived on Grand Island for a few months and has never encountered anything like this in his life.
“I won’t personally blame the presidential election, I will place blame on the culture the presidential election created.”
After leaving the stop at the corner Bedell Road and Grand Island Boulevard, Sanders and his girlfriend called 9-1-1 hoping someone could remove the racial slurs, but he tells 7 Eyewitness News when deputies arrived they were less than helpful.
“I said officers can we just wipe this off and they tell me there is absolutely nothing I can do for you I’m sorry. . . You can call the NFTA or you can wipe it off yourself,” Sanders said tearfully.
Just minutes after we left the interview with Sanders 7 Eyewitness News found NFTA workers power washing the Plexiglas in question.
This act of hate comes just one day after a Swastika and the phrase “make America white again” was spray painted on the back of a dugout at a Wellsville park.
A spokesman for the Erie County Sheriff’s Office says the Professional Standards Division is looking into both the interaction between deputies and Sanders as well as the slurs at the bus stop.
Although any traces of Sanders’ encounter have been washed away, he says his pain is far from gone.
“It makes me feel completely unsafe to the core.”
