A mural painted to honor Nipsey Hussle at a skate park in Hartford, Connecticut was vandalized last weekend.
According to the Hartford Courant, the incident, which reportedly took place on Saturday, was recorded by several people who stood by as a woman painted cherries and other shapes over the images carefully selected to pa homage to the slain rapper.
Born Ermias Joseph Asghedom, rapper and community activist Nipsey Hussle was murdered outside of his Marathon Clothing store in South Los Angeles on March 31.
Several individuals were seen in the seven-minute clip holding up their smartphones to document the woman desecrating the mural. At one point in the video, another woman can be heard instructing the woman defacing the mural to avoid Hussle’s face.
“Not his face! Just don’t do his face,” the woman calls out in the recoding.
The artwork was created by Corey Pane, an artist who became popular transforming the shoes of NFL players into wearable art pieces.
“I always respected him more as a person than even his music and I just wanted to honor that,” Pane told the newspaper after completing the mural.
Known to locals as Heaven skate park, it sits on the intersection of Trumbull and Main Streets in the heart of Hartford. It is not only home to skateboarders, but artists as well. A variety of murals have been painted on the concrete and brick walls since it opened its gates in 2014.
By Sunday afternoon, two other women were seen repairing the mural and working to restore it a in live Facebook video. They took on the task despite having to stand in the rain to do so. Also, local teacher Joey Batts finished the job, posting his repair on Facebook.
“It was defaced yesterday,” Batts told Fox 61 News in Connecticut. “A couple of people got word of it and I just thought it was best to fix it.”
Payne has not yet made a public statement about the damage to the mural.