TAMPA — The city's first official street mural, painted along a Seminole Heights intersection, was covered with black asphalt on Thursday by city workers who mistook it for graffiti.

The brightly-colored, 28-foot wide "mandala" mural, a spiritual symbol in Hinduism and Buddhism, was created in July through the combined efforts of the city, the county and neighborhood. That is explained by a plaque near the mural at N River Boulevard and W Louisiana Avenue.

Angela Forero was at Rivercrest Park with her baby on Thursday afternoon when she noticed a truck performing some kind of work near the mural. She started taking photos and shared them on a Facebook group for Seminole Heights residents.

Commenters quickly started to realize what was going on: The mural wasn't being power-washed. It was being covered up.

"That's no shadow," one user posted, noticing the dark rim growing around the bight blue, yellow, red and orange pattern.

By 1 p.m., more than half of the treasured mural, designed by artist Catherine Thomas and painted by residents, was gone. Residents had hoped the colorful piece of street art would prompt drivers who regularly whipped around that corner to slow down.

In a statement, the City of Tampa called it an "unfortunate mistake" by the code enforcement team looking to clean up the city's graffiti.

"They were unaware this was an authorized installation," Tampa spokeswoman Christina Barker said in a statement. "The City will be back out to try and correct the damage over the next few days. If we are unable to do so, we plan to commission an artist to restore the design."

In its Facebook post, the South Seminole Heights Civic Association said it received an apology from Tampa's director of neighborhood empowerment, whose workers covered up the mural.

"The city was quick to respond and very apologetic for it all," the Civic Association wrote on its Facebook page.

The mural incident comes as the neighborhood emerges from a state of shock and fear: four people were killed there dating back to October. Police spent six weeks searching for a suspect and made an arrest on Tuesday.

But there may be a silver lining to the mural issue.

"In the end, this may be a blessing as someone squealed their tires on the mural 2 weeks after installation," the association wrote on Facebook. "This will give us an opportunity to bring it back to its original glory."

MURAL MESSUP! A @CityofTampa graffiti abatement crew wrongfully paints over a #SeminoleHeights mural. https://t.co/1LuLLwpsSK @abcactionnews pic.twitter.com/lUJt6cJuTX

Mayor Bob Buckhorn made light of the blunder in a tweet responding to the WFTS-Ch.28 reporter who broke the story: "Yeah....not many art majors on our Graffiti Abatement team. Getting it replaced."

Contact Sara DiNatale at sdinatale@tampabay.com. Follow @sara_dinatale.

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