International Desk: A statue of Christopher Columbus in Richmond's Byrd Park was vandalized, torn down, and thrown in the park's lake on Tuesday night, according to CNN affiliate WTVR.
Protesters marched to the Robert E. Lee monument in Richmond, Virginia on Tuesday. Later, some groups returned and vandalized the statue.
The crowd pulled the statue down with rope and pushed it into the lake, WTVR reported.
Columbus, a 15th-century Italian explorer, is a deeply controversial figure in the United States and held responsible for paving the way for European exploration and colonization of the Americas.
It's not the first time that a statue of him has been vandalized. In 2019 people threw red paint over statues of the explorer in San Francisco and Providence, Rhode Island.
