Man arrested after beheading Iwo Jima statue in Virginia with sledgehammer

By Diego Mendoza, CNN

(CNN) — The Battle of Iwo Jima monument in Quantico, Virginia, has suffered hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages after a man beheaded one of the statues Wednesday evening, police said.

Officers responding to a report of destruction of property at the Marine Corps Base Quantico around 10:31 p.m. saw the suspect “actively damaging the statue with a sledgehammer” and detained the man without incident, Prince William County Police said.

The suspect, identified as Maldonado Soriano of Stafford, Virginia, has been charged with felony destruction of property, trespass with intent to damage, and felony injury to a monument. He is being held without bond pending a court appearance.

CNN has reached out to Soriano’s attorney listed in court records for comment.

Authorities have not disclosed why Soriano vandalized the monument. CNN has reached out to Prince William County Police for more details.

The damaged monument — located about 36 miles south of Washington, DC— is a smaller replica of sculptor Felix de Weldon’s Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington, Virginia, and it depicts the iconic photo captured by photojournalist Joe Rosenthal on February 23, 1945, showing six US Marines raising an American flag on Japan’s Iwo Jima Island during World War II.

The statue was carved from limestone by De Weldon and is considered a “non-heroic-size” replica of the 60-foot bronze original in Arlington, according to Marine Corps Base Quantico.

Then on duty in the Navy, De Weldon first began working on the statue in 1945 when he first saw Rosenthal’s photo, and he completed the smaller limestone version for Quantico before the end of the year, according to the Marines. Arlington’s larger version was not completed until 1954.

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