A statue of George Floyd has been vandalized just four days after it was unveiled.
According to NYPD, the Union Square Park statue in New York was targeted on Sunday, October 3, with a police source telling Insider that the crime was discovered at around 10:15 AM.
"Preliminary investigation determined that an unidentified individual threw gray paint on the face and base of the statue. There are no arrests and the investigation is ongoing," NYPD said in a statement.
According to WNBC, the statue was unveiled on Thursday, September 30, as part of the "SEEINJUSTICE" exhibition which also features other statues of important Black figures including Breonna Taylor.
Per Reuters, Floyd died in May of last year after he was stopped by Minneapolis police on suspicion of using a fake $20 bill, which resulted in Derek Chauvin, a white police officer, kneeling on his neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds, despite Floyd's protests that he could not breathe.
Taylor, a Black woman, meanwhile, lost her life to police in March of 2020 when they shot and killed her during a botched raid on her apartment, according to The New York Times.
The two deaths resulted in mass protests across the US and the world in the name of Black Lives Matter and to protest police brutality.
The artist who created the statues, Chris Carnabuci, told CNN that while he wasn't shocked the Floyd statue had been defaced, he was upset.
"I'm not shocked, but I'm still p***ed," he said. "It's a very counterproductive thing to do, and it's not the kind of civil discourse - the keyword being civil - I wanted."
A team of volunteers subsequently cleaned up the statue after it was vandalized, CNN reports.
"It was really hard to see this larger-than-life man like this," Harmony Seaburg, one of the volunteers, said. "We're trying to get all the paint off his face, but it's very emotional."
This is not the first time that a statue of Floyd has been a vandalism target, and earlier this year, a statue of him was vandalized by a white supremacy group.
