A Lake City family found racist graffiti sprayed on what’s left of the home they lost in a fire on New Year’s Eve.
The family has a 6-year-old boy in the hospital battling leukemia.
Now there is no home for Army veteran Joanne Perkins’ stepson Ivory to come home to after his 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?” Perkins said.
Perkins said the fire started because her eldest son left the oven on when no one was home.
She said when she came over on Monday morning to salvage what was left of their belongings, she saw a racist slur spray-painted on the back of their home and “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.”
Photos: Family finds house spray-painted with racial slurs
Perkins said the Red Cross is putting her family of six up in a hotel for a week, but after that they have nowhere to go.
She said she’s trying to hold in her emotions the best she can so her children don’t lose hope. “Yeah, I’m tired. I am. But nothing in me is going to allow me to give up,” she said.
Perkins said Ivory got to come home from the hospital one day last month and, while he was there, he put ornaments and an angel on top of their Christmas tree.
Just steps away from the kitchen, the tree was untouched by the fire.
Perkins' family has set up a page to raise money for a new place to live.
Cox Media Group
