By Alexander Wilson-
A man has vandalised a George Floyd statue set up in Manhattan Square, two days after it was unveiled for an exhibition set up to recognise racial injustice.
Early this morning, U.S police released a video that shows an unidentified skateboarder chucking paint over the statue in a Manhattan park.
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The statue of George Floyd in New York city’s Union Square was defaced just two days after it was unveiled for an exhibition set up to recognise racial injustice.
In the incident captured on camera, an unidentified skateboarder splashed grey paint across the face of the larger-than-life statue at 10am on Sunday, police said.
The police have began the investigation into the incident and the clean up drive to restore the bust to its original shine began immediately by volunteers.
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Videos on social media showed volunteers scraping paint off the statue.
“We put it in two days ago and 48 hours later here we are with vandalism,” said Lindsay Eshelman, co-founder of the group Confront Art.
It is not the first act of vandalism of the statue installed in the memory of Floyd, whose murder sparked a racial justice movement across the world after he was killed by a Minneapolis police officer last year.
In June, the statue was smeared with black paint and marked with an alleged logo of a white supremacist group, five days after it was unveiled in Flatbush Avenue, in Brooklyn.
The three statues were each almost six feet tall, weighed approximately 1,000 pounds, and covered in bronze metallic paint over 200 layers of African mahogany plywood.
The suspect has yet to be formally identified, however, he was caught on camera at around 10.15am on Saturday, October 2 going towards the installation with a bag.
In the video, the man can be seen throwing grey paint on the statue of Floyd’s face, before he rides off, heading north while in the park’s west side, New York Post reported.
According to reports, an adult and child witnessed the act as the adult was trying to take a photo of the bronze memorial.
The man in the video is pictured wearing a neon green, yellow T-shirt, khaki-coloured jacket, black knee-length shorts, white socks, black and white trainers and carrying a green rucksack. He can also be seen wearing a black hat. He is described as being of medium build and with a light complexion.Brooklyn Borough president Eric Adams expressed condemnation of the vandalism in a tweet.
“I am disgusted by the vandalism of George Floyd’s statue in Union Square. Mr. Floyd’s murder last summer ignited a nationwide movement for justice,” he said.
“The trauma of his tragic death should not be compounded by the trauma of seeing his memorial defaced,” he said.
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