At least four protesters arrested in Orlando for chalking messages on the former Pulse memorial crosswalk have now been released without charges. Orestes Sebastian Suarez, 29, Maryjane East, 25, Donavon Short, 26, and Zane Aparicio, 39, were each booked last week by the Florida Highway Patrol for allegedly “defacing a traffic device.” However, on Monday, prosecutors quietly dropped the cases, leaving many to question why the arrests had occurred in the first place.
Talking to WESH 2, Suarez said,
“To be threatened with something so extreme as a felony charge for protesting and showing love to your fellow human — it’s just insane in my opinion,”.
The controversy began on August 21, when Florida officials repainted the rainbow crosswalk at West Esther and South Orange. The intersection had honored the 49 lives lost in the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting, once the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.
Protesters say they were simply trying to restore a memorial.
Demonstrator Robby Dodd told Click Orlando, “My friends died here. That’s it. This is their memorial. This is theirs.”
The rainbow design was removed under Trump administration orders to eliminate distractions from public streets. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy wrote in July, “Taxpayers expect their dollars to fund safe streets, not rainbow crosswalks.”
Yet an Orlando Sentinel analysis shows colorful crosswalks actually improve safety. Meanwhile, Governor Ron DeSantis insists they create hazards, echoing his broader campaign against LGBTQ+ visibility in Florida.
For the protesters, however, the fight is about memory, not politics. Suarez recalled, “We put some chalk down on the ground… and before I knew it, I was in the back of a squad car.”
Their lawyer argued water-soluble chalk hardly amounts to felony-level damage — a point the judge agreed with.
