Crews hit setback on bringing down Raleigh Confederate monument on Capitol grounds
RALEIGH, N.C. (WTVD) -- As of 11:30 p.m. on Tuesday, the obelisk on the NC Confederate Monument has been removed.
Crews worked to remove the Confederate monument on state Capitol grounds in Raleigh Tuesday morning but they ran into some troubles.
A crane and new moving equipment showed up around 2 a.m. and work began to move the statue around 4:45 a.m. Straps were wrapped around the top of the monument with a crane attempting to move it. The straps have since been taken off and crews felt the job needed a bigger crane. A crew member said he heard a snapping noise from the straps when they tried to lift it.
The bigger crane arrived Tuesday afternoon and the work renewed.
Workers told ABC11's Ana Rivera it costs "thousands of dollars per hour" to rent the crane.
"The remaining monument is large and requires additional expertise to remove," said Dory MacMillan, a spokeswoman for Gov. Roy Cooper. "It will be removed as soon as possible."
People stopped by to catch a glimpse of the work along Salisbury Street.
Last week, Gov. Cooper ordered all monuments on the Capitol grounds to be moved "to protect public safety." The order includes the monument to the Women of the Confederacy, the figure of Henry Lawson Wyatt and the rest of the North Carolina Confederate monument.
On Saturday, crews removed two Confederate monuments from downtown Raleigh, including the Daughters of the Confederacy Monument and the Henry Lawson Wyatt Monument.
On Friday, Demonstrators climbed and successfully toppled two statues from the Confederate monument outside the Capitol building. Some threw yellow ropes around two of the statues on the monument to help bring the structure down.
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"I have ordered the Confederate monuments on the Capitol grounds be moved to protect public safety. I am concerned about the dangerous efforts to pull down and carry off large, heavy statues and the strong potential for violent clashes at the site. If the legislature had repealed their 2015 law that puts up legal roadblocks to removal we could have avoided the dangerous incidents of last night," Cooper said on Saturday. "Monuments to white supremacy don't belong in places of allegiance, and it's past time that these painful memorials be moved in a legal, safe way."
