by Neetu Chandak

A University of North Carolina Chapel Hill student was found guilty Monday of vandalizing a Confederate statue.

Maya Little, a Ph.D. student in history at UNC, was charged in May for throwing blood and red paint at the “Silent Sam” statue on April 30, according to CBS 17.

Maya Little a UNC history PhD student put her blood and red ink on silent Sam 5-10 minutes ago @Move_Silent_Sam @ABC11_WTVD @MicahAHughes @WNCN @WRAL pic.twitter.com/eLiC3zjXrg — Samee Siddiqui (@ssiddiqui83) April 30, 2018

“Chancellor [Carol] Folt, if you refuse to remove the statue, then we will continue to contextualize it,” Little said in a statement to Folt on April 30. “Silent Sam is violence; Silent Sam is the genocide of black people; Silent Sam is antithetical to our right to exist. You should see him the way that we do, at the forefront of our campus covered in our blood.”

Protesters bury the head in dirt. pic.twitter.com/qrAriio9ox — The Daily Tar Heel (@dailytarheel) August 21, 2018

The statue was torn down by protesters on Aug. 20, though it is illegal for Confederate statues to be removed without legislative approval, CBS 17 reported.

Seventeen UNC professors threatened to take down the statue in February.

The university spent $390,000 to protect the statue between June 2017 and June 2018.