A Virginia man was arrested on Wednesday after allegedly using a sledgehammer to decapitate the statue depicting Marine Corps Cpl. Harlon Block from Quantico’s Iwo Jima sculpture.
At roughly 10:13 p.m., officers with the Prince William County Police Department responded to calls about property destruction near Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia.
Miguel Alonso Maldonado Soriano, 27, was arrested at the scene and has been charged with felony destruction of property, trespass with intent to damage property, and felony injury to a monument, per the police department.
The alleged destruction via a sledgehammer has caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage to the historic military monument, police said.
Per the Washington Post, a second Marine from the statue is missing the bayonet from the rifle slung over his back, while a third figure’s helmet and face had been “chipped and gouged.”
The memorial was created in honor of Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal’s iconic photograph of U.S. Marines raising the flag over Mount Suribachi, Iwo Jima, on Feb. 23, 1945.
Austrian-born American sculptor Felix de Weldon, serving with the U.S. Navy at the time, was so moved by the image that he immediately constructed a scale model of the flag raising.
It would take him another nine and a half years to complete the full-sized model now standing in Arlington, Virginia. The smaller monument, allegedly defaced by Maldonado Soriano, stands near the National Museum of the Marine Corps.
Maldonado Soriano is being held without bond pending a court appearance.
