Central Coast love heart graffiti artist Daniel Bolton jailed
An ex-con has been busted for spray painting “love heart” graffiti. Could this be the end of the coast’s most annoying trend?
Central Coast
Don't miss out on the headlines from Central Coast. Followed categories will be added to My News.
A love heart graffiti artist has been jailed for up to eight months but it may not be the end of the ugly trend sweeping the Central Coast, a court has heard.
Daniel Thomas Bolton, of Budgewoi, pleaded guilty to recklessly damaging property after police caught him red-handed spray painting a love heart on a street sign in the middle of the night.
The Gosford Local Court heard the 29-year-old bolted on foot but police arrested him after a brief pursuit.
The unemployed father-of-two pleaded guilty to the graffiti and two other weapons offences after he told police he had a set of knuckle dusters in his shorts despite the fact he was subject to a weapons prohibition order.
Bolton appeared at Gosford Local Court on Thursday where he was sentenced to 13 months jail with a non-parole period of eight months.
With time served since his arrest Bolton will be eligible for release on August 29.
An agreed set of facts revealed police were travelling in an unmarked car when they came to the intersection of Cochrone St and Empire Bay Rd at Kincumber at 1.10am on December 30 and found him standing in the middle of the roundabout.
“For the past 12 months there has been a spate of incidents across the Central Coast, where love hearts are spray painted on various public structures namely street signs, bollards, gutters and bus stops,” the police facts read.
“Police stopped directly beside Bolton, who was standing in the roundabout spray painting a red love heart on a street sign. Upon looking at police the accused immediately dropped the can and ran in a westerly direction along Cochrone St. In doing so the accused dropped another can of spray paint onto the roadway.”
Police chased him on foot for about 100m before he turned around and “appeared to shape up to police”.
Fearing they were about to be assaulted officers gave him a short burst of capsicum spray, which had an immediate effect.
He made full admissions to spray painting the sign but denied spray painting any other hearts.
The court heard he had been diagnosed with multiple conditions including tourette’s syndrome, anxiety and depression and that his father — a bikie who did drugs — died when Bolton was quite young.
The court also heard he was on parole at the time for two other matters and had “so many weapons offences” on his record.
However sis solicitor Damien Conn said Bolton had been stabbed twice in the abdomen while in prison and at the time had learned those responsible had recently been released and were looking for him.
He said that was why he had the knuckle dusters.
Immediately after he was sentenced Bolton lodged a severity appeal, which will go before the District Court at a future date.
His arrest follows the unrelated arrest of Arizona’s notorious “Penis Man” Dustin Shomer in January.
Shomer was charged with 16 counts of aggravated criminal damage, eight counts of criminal damage and one count of criminal trespassing, all related to incidents where he spray-painted “Penis Man” on various buildings and objects.
The graffiti tag captured nationwide attention in the US after the town of Tempe was besieged with the two-word tag scrawled everywhere.
However Shomer told media in the US he was not “the Penis Man’ but merely a disciple.
“I’m not the original,” Shomer told the Phoenix New Times.
“There are hundreds of copycats with very distinctively different handwriting.”