Police arrested a leftist activist after he spray-painted a gun control message on the 9/11 memorial in New York City.
Johnathan Tijerina filmed himself at Ground Zero on Monday spray-painting the words “just stop killing kids” on top of panels listing the names of victims of the Islamic terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 innocent people. New York City police officers arrested the 31-year-old Tijerina and charged him with criminal mischief and making graffiti.
“My name is Jon Tijerina and I’ve just spray-painted ‘just stop killing kids’ on the 9/11 Memorial,” Tijerina said in a video posted to Instagram that showed him using red spray paint to scrawl the name of his website on the solemn memorial.
The act of vandalism was witnessed by a 16-year-old boy from the United Kingdom named Ed Duffy.
“I saw somebody with red spray paint, and they sprayed ‘just stop killing kids’ over some of the names,” Duffy told CBS New York. “And then within, like, less than a minute, the police came and arrested him.”
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Tijerina’s group “Just Stop Killing Kids” advocates for a “universal gun registry” and “universal background checks.” The group says on its website that “civil resistance is the only strategy with a proven track record of forcing change when governments refuse to act.”
“On October 26, 2026, Jon Tijerina was arrested for spraying red paint on Freedom Tower in NYC. He is demanding that Trump and Mamdani enforce common-sense, highly popular demands with respect to guns such as Universal Background Checks and a National Gun Registry,” Just Stop Killing Kids wrote on Instagram on Tuesday. “The fact is: guns are a moral emergency in this country.”
The 9/11 Memorial is located at the exact spot where the Twin Towers fell on September 11, 2001, after Islamic terrorists affiliated with Al-Qaeda flew passenger jets into the buildings.
“The 9/11 Memorial is a sacred place of reflection at the heart of a rebuilt World Trade Center that honors the 2,983 victims killed in the September 11, 2001 and February 26, 1993 terrorist attacks,” a memorial spokesman said Tuesday. “Yesterday’s brief incident was swiftly addressed by security staff and law enforcement, and the impacted area was immediately restored to its commemorative state.”
The New York City Council last month allocated $1 million toward educating young people on the events of 9/11. Much of the funding will go toward scholarships for eighth graders in NYC to attend the memorial and the accompanying museum, which tells the story of those impacted by the attack.
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