New Hampshire DOT mobile message board altered with vulgar message about President Biden

By Amy Coveno

Click here for updates on this story

    MANCHESTER, New Hampshire (WMUR) — Early risers driving on Interstate 93 South in Manchester got an eyeful Sunday morning.

A Department of Transportation roadside message board was altered overnight.

For a brief time, the lighted message showed an expletive followed by the president’s last name.

The sign wasn’t up for long and it was turned away from traffic, but it was up long enough for a WMUR viewer to notice the vulgar message on his way to breakfast at 6 a.m. Sunday morning.

“I’m driving down the road and I’m coming to the split to go to the mall or to go to Boston and I see the sign,” said Rick, of Hooksett. “I can’t even believe it.”

News 9 cannot show the message or describe the message, or even abbreviate the word, but it was four letters, vulgar, and followed by the name “Biden.”

“To me, I don’t care whether you’re Republican or Democrat, it’s just like wrong on so many levels,” Rick said.

“We were notified around 6-6:30, so it was up an hour, maybe an hour and a half,” said Richard Arcand, public information officer with the New Hampshire DOT.

A hasty, crack-of-dawn investigation by the DOT determined that it’s a mobile traffic message board. This particular one was part of a bridge rehab project on Huse Road that is supposed to say “shoulder closed.”

“Someone must have vandalized it to get into it. Because it’s not connected to the internet. It’s a stand-alone unit that is programmed in the field,” Arcand said.

The investigation will include the DOT construction engineers contacting the contractor to figure out the last person responsible for this message board.

Arcand said state police checked the area Sunday morning and didn’t find anything suspicious.

But the short-lived vulgarity is getting reactions from social media posts to calls into state offices and newsrooms.

“It was unbelievable, I was blown away that it was on there,” Rick said.

If DOT officials can identify the sign vandal, charges are likely. It’s illegal to tamper with construction equipment in a work zone.

Please note: This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.