A legendary Miami graffiti artist known for tagging overhead signs on Interstate 95 was killed on May 13 by an oncoming Brightline train.
Eric Alan Hirt, 47, was struck and killed at 12:26 a.m. while walking on the tracks in Biscayne Park, Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office Detective Joseph Peguero Rivera said in an email. The Miami-Dade Medical Examiner’s Office confirmed that the train was a Brightline. The office is still investigating. Brightline officials declined to comment.
Known as “Eson,” Hirt was a member of the MSG Crew, or Miami Style Gods, a group of street graffiti artists that formed in the 1990s. Hirt — with crew founder Crome — appeared in a 2018 documentary by Vice, “The Last Vandals,” recounting their daring vandalism missions, with police at their heels, and reflecting on how graffiti became culturally acceptable and commercially embraced, in Wynwood.
Video footage in the film shows him climbing across metal scaffolding to “bomb” a street sign hanging over I-95, emblazoning it with his name.
“Graffiti to me is like a sickness,” he said in the film. “I can’t drive down the street without wanting to hit every curb, pole, sign, wall. It’s just programmed in my head.”
He was revered in the graffiti world.
“Today we mourn the loss of our brother ESON, a true king of the highways, but also a friend and a father,” the MSGCrew account posted on Instagram. “We will forever keep his name alive. Paint the heavens man, see you when we get there.”
Hirt’s death was at least the 206th Brightline fatality since it started test runs in 2017, and the ninth death this year, according to a joint Miami Herald/WLRN investigation. Deaths and injuries this year are down compared to last year, when 13 people had died by mid-May.
Hirt’s wife of 26 years, Shawn Hirt, told the Herald he often crossed the unfenced tracks behind their house on Northeast 11th Place. He was partially deaf, it was dark, and it’s a “quiet zone” with no train horn, she said. Police told her the Brightline was traveling at 79 miles an hour.
READ MORE: Killer Train: Brightline death toll surpasses 180, but safeguards are still lacking
Police viewed footage from the Brightline cab, and Hirt said they told her he was carrying something and looked up at the last second with a “deer in the headlights” expression. She said it was an accident.
“We’re devastated,” she said.
“I don’t understand why there’s not a lot more safety features,” she added. “How many people have to die?”
A GoFundMe was set up to raise money for his two daughters, who are 15 and 18. He was also the primary caregiver for his mother, Shawn Hirt told the Herald. The Miami-born Hirt was an electrician by trade, his death certificate says.
Hirt said her husband had lived in the home for 35 years. The tracks, also used by FEC freight trains, run along a residential neighborhood.
“Every time the train passes by, it’s a reminder,” she said. “It’s a constant reminder of what we lost.”
