A man is in custody, accused of taking a sledgehammer to a statue depicting the raising of the flag on Iwo Jima, Japan, during World War II.
The statue is two miles from Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia.
The Prince William County Police Department arrived at the statue in Triangle at 10:13 p.m. Wednesday, finding Miguel Alonso Maldonado Soriano in the process of vandalizing it, police said.
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He had already decapitated one of the statue’s soldiers and was taken into custody without further incident, the police said.
The damage to the statue, a smaller limestone version of the U.S. Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington, according to the Historical Marker Database, is estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, police said.
Mr. Maldonado Soriano, 27, was charged with felony destruction of property, trespass with intent to damage property, and felony injury to a monument. He’s being held without bond.
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