NEW YORK, Aug. 7 (UPI) -- A statue in New York's Coney Island honoring Brooklyn Dodgers Jackie Robinson and PeeWee Reese was vandalized with racial slurs, police said Wednesday.
The Nazi swastika symbol was also scrawled on the statue outside the Brooklyn Cyclones stadium, the New York Daily News reported. The damage was discovered Wednesday morning by a manager.
"The statue is a symbol of tolerance," Billy Harner, a Cyclones spokesman, said. "It's an absolute tragedy that someone would deface it the way they did."
Robinson was the first black player in Major League Baseball while Reese, his teammate for his entire career with the Dodgers, was white.
The graffiti was removed Wednesday morning. Harner said the dirty work was done some time after the close of Tuesday night's game at the stadium.
