A Starbucks store in Ashburn had to delay its opening this morning — Friday, May 3 — after employees arrived to find the windows covered in graffiti.
It happened at the Starbucks in the Ashbrook Marketplace shopping plaza, near Ashburn Village Boulevard and Route 7.
According to several witnesses, the graffiti was “pro Palestinian” in nature and related to the ongoing Israel-Gaza conflict.
The store normally opens at 5:30 a.m. on Fridays, but the doors were locked today and a sign in the drive-thru window said “Closed until further notice.”
We are told Starbucks staff cleaned up the graffiti, which appears to have been limited to the glass windows and not the surrounding brick facade.
The windows themselves still had a cloudy swirls on them as if they had recently been wiped with cleaning solution, and there was something that looked like red paint splattered on the sidewalk in front of the store.
An employee told us the store was expected to re-open by 8:30 a.m. today.
Deputies from the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office were at the scene in the pre-dawn hours. A spokesperson for the sheriff says there was also graffiti reported at the Starbucks at 44050 Pipeline Plaza in Ashburn.