Public statues vanishing across the world

Though it’s unclear whether Bristol’s “Hiker” statue was mauled by mindless vandals or damaged by failed metal thieves, there’s no doubt that public statues across the world are falling victim to the soaring value of scrap metal.
In Detroit, someone snatched an 8-foot tall Jesus off the wall of a church, where it had hung for more than a century.
A $30,000 statue of Dennis the Menace vanished from a Monterey County, Calif. Park.
A bronze figure of former Olympic champion Steve Ovett disappeared in Brighton, England.
A statue of Lewis and Clark guide Sacagawea and her baby was stolen from the Fort Clatsop National Memorial Park near Warrenton, Oregon
Bronze plaques on a historic statue of P.T. Barnum in Bridgeport's Seaside Park vanished.
Copper-bronze statues that stood opposite a Cape Town, South Africa police station of anti-apartheid heroes Robbie Waterwitch and Coline Williams also disappeared.
A bronze miner who stood for 80 years in a Los Angeles park was cut in half above the knees and ripped from his pedestal in a park two blocks from Beverly Hills.
Life-sized bronze statues of children outside the Silliman Center in Newark, N.J. went missing.
A statue called the Battle Cross, commemorating the war on terrorism, was snatched from its stand in Yakima, Wash.
"Reclining Figure," a 2.1-ton sculpture by artist Henry Moore that’s worth $5 million was stolen from a museum in England. It would fetch about $10,000 from a scrap dealer.
The “Spirit of the American Doughboy” -- a zinc representation of a World War I infantryman -- was ripped from the ground in Anderson, S.C.
A bronze piece depicting Ukrainian Taras Shevchenko, erected in an Oakville, Canada park named for him in 1951, was chopped off at the feet and carted away.
In Chicago, a 6-foot, 150-pound stainless steel sculpture was stolen from the front entrance of the Newberry Library
A 7-foot Buddha, covered in copper-laden bronze, was stolen from an outdoor temple shrine at the Thai Buddhist Center in Elk River, Minnesota.

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Copyright 2008. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com