COLUMBUS STATUE PULLED DOWN IN US
WASHINGTON: Anti-racism protesters in Baltimore pulled down a statue of Christopher Columbus and threw it into the city’s Inner Harbor on Saturday night, even as President Donald Trump vowed to defeat what he called the radical left.
In Seattle, a female protester died from injuries suffered when a car hit her and another woman.
Trump used his 4th of July address to the nation to take on the protests that have broken out nationwide since the death of African American George Floyd. “We are now in the process of defeating the radical left: the Marxists, the anarchists, the agitators, the looters,” he said in Washington DC.
Before the speech - and a military flyover and fireworks - protesters gathered near the White House at the newly named Black Lives Matter Plaza. Protest rallies were held in several cities including Minnesota, Minneapolis, where Floyd died under police custody.
“We will never allow an angry mob to tear down our statues, erase our history, indoctrinate our children,” Trump said. “And we will protect and preserve American way of life, which began in 1492 when Columbus discovered America.”
His remarks echoed those he gave at Mount Rushmore the night before, in which he said people attacking historical monuments are part of a “merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values, and indoctrinate our children.”
In Baltimore, protesters brought down the Columbus statue near the Little Italy neighbourhood.
The statue was owned by the city and dedicated in 1984 by former Mayor William Donald Schaefer and President Ronald Reagan.
A spokesman for Baltimore Mayor Bernard C “Jack” Young told The Sun that the toppling of the statue is a part of a national and global re-examination over colonial monuments “that may represent different things to different people.”
In Seattle, a car drove onto a closed freeway early Saturday and struck two people in a crowd protesting against police brutality. Summer Taylor, 24, of Seattle died in the evening at Harborview Medical Center, spokesperson Susan Gregg said.
Taylor and Diaz Love, 32, of Portland, Oregon, were hit by the car that barrelled through a panicked crowd of protesters on Interstate 5, officials said.
Dawit Kelete of Seattle drove the car around vehicles that were blocking I-5 and sped into the crowd about 1:40am local time, according to a police report released by the Washington State Patrol. Video taken at the scene by protesters showed people shouting “Car! Car!” before fleeing the roadway.
Police arrested Kelete but were still determining the motive.