A sculpture of George Floyd is unveiled as Floyd's brother Terrence, second from left, looks at Union Square in the Manhattan borough of New York.

Gulf Today Report

A statue of George Floyd in New York city’s Union Square was defaced just two days after it was unveiled for an exhibition set up to recognise racial injustice.

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In the incident captured on camera, an unidentified skateboarder splashed grey paint across the face of the larger-than-life statue at 10am on Sunday, police said.

The police have started the investigation into the incident and the cleanup drive to restore the bust to its original shine began immediately by volunteers.

Videos on social media showed volunteers scraping paint off the statue.

“We put it in two days ago and 48 hours later here we are with vandalism,” said Lindsay Eshelman, co-founder of the group Confront Art.

Sunday’s incident was not the first act of vandalism of the statue installed in the memory of Floyd, who posthumously sparked a racial justice movement across the world after he was killed by a Minneapolis police officer last year.

In June, the statue was smeared with black paint and marked with an alleged logo of a white supremacist group, five days after it was unveiled in Flatbush Avenue, in Brooklyn.