A Lake City, Fla., family say they're shocked after finding racist graffiti painted on what was left of their home, which was lost in an unrelated fire on New Year's Eve, Action News Jax reports.
The family have a 6-year-old child who is battling leukemia and now cannot come home after having a bone marrow transplant.
"How do I explain that to a 6-year-old whose only wish is he wants to come home? How do I explain that to him?” Army veteran Joanne Perkins said of her stepson, Ivory.
Perkins said the fire started when her eldest son left the oven on when no one was home. However, insult was added to injury when she went to the ruined residence Monday to attempt to salvage some of their belongings and she discovered a racist slur spray-painted on the back of the home and the words "Trump 17" painted on the side.
“I won’t let the girls come back here because I don’t want them to see,” Perkins said. “This is 2017. It doesn’t make any sense. I don’t understand it.”
Perkins told the news station that the Red Cross is putting up the family of six in a hotel for a week but that after that, they have nowhere to go.
“Yeah, I’m tired. I am. But nothing in me is going to allow me to give up,” she said.
The family have set up a YouCaring page to help with expenses.
Read more at Action News Jax.