NEW YORK, June 4 (UPI) -- A New York teenager says that he did not realize a mural honored a firefighter killed on Sept. 11, 2001, when he "tagged" the face of the dead man.
Curtis Rushing, Avery Prince's father, told the New York Daily News that the 17-year-old is "deeply sorry."
"He didn't know that it represented 9/11 and meant so much to so many people," Rushing said. "I always told him when you do things they will always come back to you. You have to be careful."
The mural depicts Peter Bielfeld and is on a wall in the Bronx neighborhood where he lived. Prince scrawled his street name, "SIPS," on the mural.
Rushing said that Prince has apologized both to Bielfeld's family and to Eddie Rodriguez, the mural's artist, and has offered to help repair the mural.
Ernest Bielfeld, Peter's father, said he hopes to talk to the teenager about his son. Peter Bielfeld was on sick leave when the World Trade Center was attacked after being injured in a fire but went to the scene and was killed when the towers collapsed.
