Update 10:45 p.m.: Protesters toppled a Confederate statue from its pedestal in Monroe Park on Saturday night.
After a day and evening of peaceful protests and marches in Richmond and its suburbs, protesters using ropes pulled down a statue honoring Confederate Gen. Williams Carter Wickham, which has stood in the park since 1891.
Most of the protesters who had marched through the city Saturday night had already dispersed when the statue was taken down. After it fell, one person urinated on the statue and then ran away.
About an hour after the incident in Monroe Park, nearly 40 cars were seen surrounding the Lee statue, blocking traffic along Monument Avenue.
In 2017, two brothers descended from a Confederate general had called on Mayor Levar Stoney and City Council to remove the statue depicting their great-great-great-grandfather.
Wickham’s is one of two statues honoring Confederate officers in Monroe Park. The other is a stone cross dedicated to Gen. Fitzhugh Lee for his service in the U.S. Army during the Spanish-American War.
Monroe Park is in the heart of the Virginia Commonwealth University campus.
(This is breaking news. This story will be updated.)
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