George Washington Statue Hands Painted Red in New Jersey; Culprit Still At Large

New Jersey police are baffled as to why an unknown suspect painted George Washington's hands red on a 14-foot marble statue.

Residents of Trenton first noticed the red-handed 7-ton statue in Mill Hill Park over the Labor Day weekend, The Trentonian reported. Police are not sure if anyone called 911 to report the defaced statue, which was most likely painted sometime between Friday night and Saturday morning.

No other part of the statue, depicting Washington in charge at the bow of his Durham boat, was painted red, NJ.com reported. The mystery has Trenton residents talking.

"It was political, I know that," said artist Jon Naar, who lives on South Montgomery Street where the statue is located, the newspaper reported.

Another resident, 96-year-old Bernice Mitchell, wonders how the culprit managed to reach above the six-foot block beneath the statue and then another 15 feet to touch Washington's hands.

"If it was spray painted, how come you don't see any other parts that got red? Someone must have climbed up there," Mitchel, who first noticed the hands on Saturday morning, told The Trentonian.

The statue represents the day the nation's first president led the nation to victory in the Revolutionary war in 1776. It debuted at the U.S. Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876 before the city bought it 20 years later, according to the newspaper.

Naar's "political" theory may not be outrageous.

In 1994, one Native American group splashed red paint on a Christopher Columbus statue in Trenton on the 500th anniversary of his arrival in the Americas. The group performed the stunt in protest of genocide, The Trentonian reported.

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