“Plain ignorance.” That’s how one local faith leader summed up what investigators are now treating as a potential hate crime.
ST. LOUIS COUNTY, MO/May 27, 2026 (STL.News) Someone spent part of their Memorial Day weekend spray-painting messages of hatred across concrete barriers and a brick wall in south St. Louis County. Police want to know who.
The graffiti — discovered Saturday morning near the 3600 block of Bayless Avenue and later on Lemay Ferry Road just blocks away — singled out Muslims with messages demanding they leave the country and declaring their faith evil. It was ugly and deliberate, and it landed in a neighborhood that is home to the Turkish American Society of Missouri.
For Minister Donald Muhammad of Muhammad Mosque #28, the vandalism spoke less to malice than to ignorance.
“How can all the Muslims go back home?” he said. “It’s mathematically impossible and logistically impossible to send all the Muslims that are born here as citizens of the United States.”
St. Louis County Police officers from the South Precinct arrived at the Bayless Avenue location shortly before 9 a.m. after a resident reported the graffiti. The second site on Lemay Ferry Road was discovered soon after. Beyond the painted messages, no property was damaged, and no one was hurt.
That hasn’t made it any easier for the community to process.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, the country’s largest Muslim civil rights organization, issued a swift condemnation, calling the incidents exactly what they are: targeted intimidation of Missouri residents based on their religion.
No arrests have been made. Detectives are still working to identify those responsible and are asking anyone with information to call the department’s non-emergency line at 636-529-8210. Tips can be submitted anonymously.
Under Missouri law, crimes motivated by a victim’s religion can carry enhanced penalties — and, depending on the value of damages, defacing property connected to religious institutions can result in additional charges under the state’s institutional vandalism statute.
The investigation is ongoing.
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