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Man Arrested After Paint Attack on George Floyd Statue in Manhattan

A 37-year-old man, Micah Beals, was arrested and charged with criminal mischief on October 25 in relation to an attack on a memorial statue of George Floyd in Manhattan’s Union Square on Saturday morning, October 3, police said.

Videos previously released by the New York City Police Department (NYPD) showed a person hurling paint over the George Floyd bust at Union Square as they passed on a skateboard, and passing through a subway turnstile

Nearby busts of late Congressman John Lewis and Breonna Taylor, the Louisville, Kentucky, woman shot and killed by police in 2020, did not appear to be defaced.

The defacing of the statue at its new Union Square location occurred two days after it was unveiled there. It was also the second time the statue had been defaced, having been vandalized in late June at its previous location at Brooklyn’s Flatbush Junction. On that occasion, four suspects spray-painted the name of a white supremacist group on Floyd’s head and covered up text on the statue’s pedestal, according to the NYPD Hate Crime Task Force. Credit: NYPD via Storyful