Over the weekend, a suspect tagged a building housing a Castro-area floral design shop with hateful graffiti, and the shop owners are hoping San Francisco police will bring the suspect to justice soon.

Jeff Dumlao, the co-owner of floral design studio Chartreuse by Roje at Market and Church streets, was horrified to find graffiti sprayed on the wall outside his shop on Saturday, just after he and partner Roberto Cancel had closed up shop for the day.

"We closed at 5 pm and we were going to support one of our friends at an art show down the street, and on the way, we get a text from one of our clients saying, 'I know you just closed, but you might want to come back because there's some unpleasant graffiti on the wall outside your store and some sort of disturbance happening,'" Dumlao explains.

Dumlao and Cancel walked back to the shop and found there were already multiple SFPD officers on the scene, and their upstairs neighbor had just been assaulted by the lone suspect, who had fled the scene in a white SUV.

And, they saw they graffiti that had been left behind on the wall outside the store's front door.

"What bothered us the most was really the exact words," Dumlao says.

The message: "Faggots = gas chambers."

The upstairs neighbor had seen the suspect exit his SUV and start painting something on the wall. The neighbor then went down to the street and confronted him, saying "This is my home, you can't be spraying this on the walls."

At that point, the suspect allegedly punched the neighbor in the face, got in his car, and drove off, crashing into a parked car in the process. He then fled down 14th Street, according to witnesses.

The neighbor snapped a photo of the suspect's vehicle and license plate, and he had a message painted on his rear window that said "Onward Christian Soldiers. Charlie Kirk Rest In Power."

Charlie Kirk, the assassinated right-wing pundit and organizer, was known for espousing virulently anti-LGBTQ views and pushing a Christian nationalist agenda.

San Francisco police have reportedly said that they are preparing to make an arrest, and that they have a good lead — one would hope, with the license place. Police also believe this was an isolated incident, and not part of any larger pattern of similar acts.

The choice of the target location might simply have been its high visibility and its adjacency to an escape route to the freeway — the suspect obviously wasn't courageous enough to do something like this in the middle of busy Castro Street on a Saturday.

As for the graffiti itself, it did not survive for longer than a few minutes. Dumlao and Cancel found a can of paint in their shop and painted over it immediately.

"Our first instinct was just to cover that up," Dumlao tells SFist. "We don't want to give them any more ammunition, and let that message stay there or let them think they can get away with that — especially in the Castro of all places."

Dumlao adds that they are working with their landlord and a local artist to paint over the affected wall with a mural that is a bouquet of flowers. "I want to commemorate this with an image of beauty and of love," Dumlao says.

This remains an ongoing investigation and police have been working with the assault victim in making an eventual arrest.

Nate Bourg, the president of the Castro Merchants, issued a statement saying he is "deeply saddened" by the incident and what it says about "the hateful divisions still present in our society."

"This was not just vandalism — it was a deliberate hate crime targeting a gay-owned business and the values of safety, pride, and inclusion that define the Castro," Bourg says. "Our community has fought too hard for visibility, dignity, and security to be pushed backward by violence or intimidation."

Bourg added, "We stand united, and we will fiercely defend our businesses, our neighbors, and the community we have built together."