OAKLAND, Calif. — Police are investigating after a sculpture of Breonna Taylor was smashed to pieces in downtown Oakland over the weekend, authorities said.
The bust was installed just two weeks ago to honor Taylor, the Black woman killed by police in Louisville, Kentucky during a drug raid last March.
The installation at Latham Square was found destroyed on Saturday, prompting police to launch an investigation, the Bay Area News Group reported.
Sculptor Leo Carson called the destruction of his work an act of “racist aggression” against Taylor, whose killing was among those that led to protests in the San Francisco Bay Area and across the nation.
Carson told the Bay Area News Group that he made the sculpture to honor the legacy of the Black Lives Matter movement and its influences on contemporary political art.
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“I’ve put in hours and hours of my work and built it by hand,” Carson said. “Before the pandemic I was a waiter so I paid for this out of my own pocket. It wasn’t cheap and it was incredibly hurtful personally. But it was also an attack on Breonna Taylor and the Black Lives Matter movement."
The vandalism comes months after marchers took to the streets to protest the killings of Taylor and of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
Carson started a GoFundMe to help pay to repair the statue. As of Tuesday morning, nearly $13,000 has already been raised.
