Two weeks after its installation, a sculpture of Breonna Taylor in downtown Oakland was smashed on Saturday in what appears to be a targeted act of vandalism, San Francisco's CBS affiliate reports.
Sculptor Leo Carson created the bust of the late Taylor, who was murdered by Kentucky police earlier this year. The 26-year-old’s death sparked outrage as Black Lives Matter protests spread across the country. Unfortunately, her family and boyfriend Kenneth Walker have yet to receive justice.
Carson’s statue, made in Taylor's image and honor, incorporated the inscription "Say Her Name Breonna Taylor."
"This vandalism is an act of racist aggression, and it shows why sculpture and art matters," Carson said, per TMZ. "I made this sculpture to support the Black Lives Matter movement and while I'm overcome with rage and sadness at their cowardly act, their vandalism will make her even more potent."
Carson said the statue appears to have been hit with a baseball bat or something similar that caused chunks of the bottom and back of it to fall off.
“I don’t think there’s a single person in Oakland who doesn’t know who Breonna Taylor is, and I don’t think you attack a sculpture like that by accident,” he said. “And I think that it was an act of racism and an act of aggression and intimidation.”
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Police are reportedly investigating the vandalism, but with no leads thus far. In the meantime, Carson plans to rebuild the sculpture of Taylor using bronze. He’s kicked off a GoFundMe page to raise money for the repairs.
“I hope that it will inspire solidarity and that we can rebuild this you know even stronger than it was before,” Carson said.
On Monday, the New York Timespublished a video that digitally recreates the events that led to Breonna Taylor's death. According to NYT, the video is a "3-D model of the scene and pieced together critical sequences of events to show how poor planning and shoddy police work led to a fatal outcome."
