George Floyd mural damaged for a second time

The damage is more extensive than an August incident.

October 7, 2020 at 2:18AM
The latest vandalism to the George Floyd mural at 38th Street and S. Chicago Avenue S. was noticed Monday and shared on the Black Lives Matter Minnesota page, where it was widely shared and condemned.
The latest vandalism to the George Floyd mural at 38th Street and S. Chicago Avenue S. was noticed Monday and shared on the Black Lives Matter Minnesota page, where it was widely shared and condemned. (Vince Tuss/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

The George Floyd mural at 38th Street and S. Chicago Avenue in south Minneapolis was defaced recently with red paint.

Surveillance video shows a man wearing shorts, a black vest and a black ski mask — with a face mask over the ski mask — walk up to the mural and spray it at 4:21 a.m. on Sunday, said T.J. Abumayyaleh, an employee at Cup Foods.

This is the second time that the mural has been damaged. A former medical student at the University of Minnesota admitted to the Reformer, a local online news site, that he was the person seen in surveillance footage one night in August defacing the Floyd mural with black spray paint. The 26-year-old man claimed he was drunk at the time and apologized; he's no longer enrolled at the U.

The mural has not been repaired after either incident.

The city has made plans for a permanent memorial to Floyd at the intersection where he was killed May 25.

Carter Sims, 3, of Pine Island, Minnesota, runs past a mural at the George Floyd memorial outside Cup Foods in Minneapolis on Thursday, June 25, 2020.
The George Floyd memorial outside Cup Foods in Minneapolis, shown in June. (Tns - Tns/The Minnesota Star Tribune)
about the writer

about the writer

Matt McKinney

Reporter

Matt McKinney writes about his hometown of Stillwater and the rest of Washington County for the Star Tribune's suburbs team. 

See More

More from Minneapolis

card image

From small businesses to giants like Target, retailers are benefitting from the $10 billion industry for South Korean pop music, including its revival of physical album sales.