In Lakewood, people want to know who was behind a series of bizarre, politically-charged images that were put on an electronic billboard for hours Tuesday night.
Police believe the billboard was hacked.
The billboard usually displays ads for stores at the Lakewood Town Center mall, but instead showed outlandish memes, mostly featuring doctored images of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who was shot and killed in September.
The billboard has since been deactivated.
“It was a good six or seven hours,” Brodrick Rhone, who works across the street from the billboard, said. “It was at least 8:40, 9:00 at night and it was still going, that’s when I left here.”
The billboard showed doctored images of Kirk kissing a cartoon character, preparing to kiss murdered rapper XXX Tentacion and more. One of the images encouraged a sex act.
Another showed a screenshot of a YouTuber reacting to an Albanian military parade.
Several featured the logo for AIPAC, a pro-Israel lobby group. Though many of the images seemed political in nature, their actual meaning was not clear.
“I don’t know what the person was actually trying to portray with it, nothing like that,” Rhone said.
Some were offended by the display and want to see the person responsible held accountable.
“It’s very hard when you get on the internet like that to find out who did it,” Fred Bannister, who was offended by the display, said. “But I think it’s pretty stupid and really rude.”
The Lakewood Police Department told KIRO 7 the officer who covers the mall saw the billboard Tuesday night and brought it to the attention of the mall’s management.
The billboard has been turned off until management can figure out who was behind the hack and how they did it.
©2025 Cox Media Group
