Two Graffiti Artists Arrested While Tagging Verizon Billboard Sign off I-20

Tag, you're arrested!

Police arrested two men early Wednesday after a motorist spotted them tagging a Verizon billboard with graffiti on a stretch of I-20 in Grant Park.

Police arrested Seth Shaw, 19, of Griffin, and Daniel Holtzclaw, a 24-year-old from Southeast Atlanta. Both were charged with one count of criminal damage to
property and one count of criminal trespass.

A motorist traveling west on I-20 saw the pair spray painting the Verizon Wireless billboard near the Boulevard exit, Carlos Campos, a police spokesman, said.

That officer and others saw the pair leaving the property — a private, fenced-in area — with bicycles and cans of spray paint near Chastain Street and Woodward Avenue.

The arrests come as city officials have refocused their attention on graffiti and other so-called low-level nuisance crimes.

The Atlanta Police Department reformed its unit earlier this year, in part to combat graffiti.

And the arrests come after at one Edgewood Avenue resident filed a $1 million lawsuit against several graffiti artists in Fulton County Superior Court earlier this month, though neither Griffin nor Holtzclaw are named as defendants.

Atlanta Police are seeing if the pair are linked to any other vandalism acts in the city.