Wisconsin state Sen. Tim Carpenter was attacked Tuesday night as crowds outside the state Capitol tore down two statues amid protests following the arrest of a Black man who was at a restaurant with a megaphone and a baseball bat.
Video released by the Madison Police Department shows the man talking through the megaphone Tuesday while walking near the restaurant’s outdoor patio. He is following a white man into the restaurant and accusing him of being a racist.
He then goes inside and says he is "disturbing" the restaurant. WARNING: The video below contains profane language.
Carpenter was attacked after he took a picture of the protesters.
“I don’t know what happened,” Carpenter told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “All I did was stop and take a picture, and the next thing I’m getting five, six punches, getting kicked in the head."
Statues of Wisconsin’s motto “Forward” and of Col. Hans Christian Heg were dragged from the Capitol.
The statue of Heg, an anti-slavery activist who fought and died for the Union during the U.S. Civil War, was decapitated and thrown into a Madison lake by protesters, the newspaper said.
Protesters chanting for the release of the man who’d been arrested also broke glass at the Tommy Thompson Center and smashed windows and lights at the state Capitol. Early Wednesday, police in riot gear worked to clear a crowd of about 100 people that remained in the area.
The unrest followed weeks of protests of the death of George Floyd, who died May 25 in Minneapolis after a white police officer used his knee to pin down Floyd after he was handcuffed and complaining of not being able to breathe.
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