Global Courant 2023-05-26 18:47:57
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MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A man who, during a night of protests in 2020, drove the car that helped tear down the statue of a Civil War hero and abolitionist outside the Wisconsin State Capitol has been sentenced to six months in prison.
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Hans Christian Heg statute was overthrown and beheaded during a protest in downtown Madison in June 2020 against police brutality. Protests began a month earlier against the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police and flared up again in June after Madison police arrested a black activist.
Kelsey D. Nelson, 33, was convicted of his role in defacing Heg’s statue and for looting a nearby jewelry store about a month earlier, the Wisconsin State Journal reported Friday.
Nelson apologized in court, saying he was “someone trying to make a difference”.
“I was just a person who woke up and saw the injustice done to a man named George Floyd,” Nelson said. “Am I going to say what I did was right? I am not.”
Nelson was also ordered to pay $5,000 to the jewelry store, compensation to be shared with two other people, and $2,500 to the State Department of Administration for the damage to the Heg statue, compensation to be shared with four others. are shared.
Most of the original Heg statue has been restored, but the head was stolen and had to be recreated. A man convicted of felony theft for stealing the head has since returned it to the state.
