What’s left of Baltimore’s Christopher Columbus was lifted out of the Inner Harbor Monday morning as officials continued to debate the monument’s merits days after protesters pulled it over, dragged pieces of it to the water and tossed them in with no immediate response from police. Private crews with Specialty Underwater Services and Iacoboni Site Specialists lifted the pieces of the statue out of the water around 8:30 a.m.

John Pica, a former state senator and an Italian-American from Baltimore, helped organize the effort to recover the marble statue, which stood at the border of Baltimore’s Little Italy and Harbor East neighborhoods for 36 years until a group heaved it into the Inner Harbor on the Fourth of July.