Duplicate graphics (vectors) in a file ontop of each other and I cannot get rid oopf teh extra...

I have a pdf I imported and it has an vector-graphic of a street sign. there are actually two images of these graphics sitting on top of each other. I bought Astute Graphics' Vector First Aid, which has a "remove duplicate art" function that works when I create the same situation from scratch, but it won't work for this file (I have reached out to Astute but have not heard back).

There is something odd though. the graphic has had all clipping masks removed and has been ungrouped and nothing is locked together. However, if I click on one of the letters, it selects only that one letter, if I draw a box around that same letter (not click-select, but box-select) it will select almost all of the letters as though they are grouped. I doubled checked and that selection is no grouped, locked so I don't know why that is happening. Is there another stting that will group a bunch of seperate vectors together?

attached is the file. I have literally hundreds of these I need to prep for printing and I amgoing nuts trying to figure this out. Any help is appreciated.