North Carolina

2 guilty for toppling North Carolina campus' Confederate statue 'Silent Sam'

HILLSBOROUGH, N.C. — Two men face a day in jail after being found guilty of rioting, damaging property and defacing a Confederate monument that had stood for a century on the campus of North Carolina's flagship public university.

The News & Observer of Raleigh reports that the state district court judge on Thursday found Raul Arce Jimenez and Shawn Birchfield-Finn Jimenez guilty in the toppling of the University of North Carolina monument nicknamed "Silent Sam." They also were assessed a $500 fine and community service.

Jimenez was previously found not guilty of toppling a Confederate statue in Durham in 2017.

Past coverage on Silent Sam:

Eleven others have been convicted in the August melee in which the Chapel Hill statue was toppled. The monument was derided as a symbol of white supremacy and defended as a Southern heritage memorial.

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