A self-styled gun-control activist was arrested after brazenly defacing the 9/11 Memorial Reflecting Pool with red spray paint in what authorities describe as a calculated political stunt carried out in broad daylight.
According to the New York Post, police identified the suspect as 31-year-old Jonathan Andrew Tijerina, who was taken into custody and charged with criminal mischief and making graffiti after he allegedly tagged a section of the North Tower reflecting pool with the name of his website on Monday evening, citing CBS News New York. Juststopkillingkids.com, read the red spray-painted markings scrawled across the engraved names of dozens of victims at the memorial built on the footprint of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attack.
Tijerina, 31, openly took credit for the desecration, posting video of himself in the midst of the act as if it were a badge of honor rather than a crime. The alleged vandal recorded the entire episode from start to finish, filming himself walking up to the memorial, pulling a spray can from his bag, and writing his message across several panels, according to multiple videos posted to Instagram.
Police said Tijerina identified himself as the person responsible for the vandalism, which caused more than $2,500 in damage to the solemn site. My name is Jon Tijerina and Ive just spray-painted just stop killing kids on the 9/11 Memorial, Tijerina boasted, treating a national shrine as a prop for his gun-control campaign.
The 9/11 Memorial and Museum confirmed that the spray paint has since been removed and the site restored. 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. Yesterdays brief incident was swiftly addressed by security staff and law enforcement, and the impacted area was immediately restored to its commemorative state, a spokesperson told CBS New York.
On his website, Tijerina promotes nonviolent civil resistance as the supposed solution to his political crusade, claiming it is the way to change laws and society. Yet his tactics included vandalizing a memorial that many Americans regard as hallowed ground, underscoring how the modern activist left often blurs the line between protest and criminality.
Tijerina even framed his arrest as a victory, using it to demand attention from President Trump and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. 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, Tijerinas organization wrote in a follow-up post.
He pointed to a mass shooting after the Florida A&M homecoming football game as his justification for the vandalism, as though criminal acts elsewhere excused his own. Tijerinas civil resistance organization issued two demands under the banner Just Stop Killing Kids universal background checks and a universal gun registry, both long-standing priorities of the gun-control lobby.
We have two specific, achievable demands. Both have majority public support. Both already exist in other high-income countries. Neither requires repealing the Second Amendment. We are not asking for the impossible we are asking for what every other wealthy democracy already has, the website states, echoing the familiar progressive push to import European-style restrictions into American life. Tijerina also complained that a previous political stunt a seven-day fast demanding 2 million affordable housing units in New York City within five years failed to attract attention, suggesting a pattern of increasingly extreme tactics to force his agenda into the public eye.
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