Prince William County police say they caught a 27-year-old Stafford man in the act of taking a sledgehammer to the Iwo Jima statue near Quantico late Wednesday night, leaving one of the depicted soldiers without a head and the monument with hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage.
Officers responded to the intersection of Richmond Highway and Fuller Road at about 10:13 p.m. Wednesday after a report of property destruction, according to WJLA. When they arrived, police said they found a man, later identified as Miguel Alonso Maldonado Soriano, actively damaging the statue. As Daily Voice reports, Maldonado Soriano was detained without incident at the scene.
The station reported that the damage included removing the head of one of the depicted soldiers, with the total cost of repairs estimated at hundreds of thousands of dollars. Maldonado Soriano was arrested and charged with felony destruction of property, trespass with intent to damage property and felony injury to a monument, per the same account. He is being held without bond, and his next court date is pending.
A Smaller Sibling to the Famous Arlington Memorial
The statue struck Wednesday night is not the towering 60-foot Marine Corps War Memorial that overlooks Washington, D.C. from Arlington. According to FauquierNow, Quantico's white-colored version was sculpted by Felix de Weldon and depicts the same famous World War II flag-raising by U.S. Marines, but it was carved from limestone and is considered a non-heroic-size replica, distinct from its colossal Arlington counterpart.
This is not the first time the Quantico memorial has been targeted. Vandals defaced the Iwo Jima Monument outside the main gate at Marine Corps Base Quantico one Tuesday evening in 2012, according to Potomac Local. That incident involved spray painting a four-inch line of paint around half of the statue's base, and police never identified a suspect.
What the Charges Could Mean
Under Virginia law, damaging a monument valued at $1,000 or more is classified as a Class 6 felony, according to the state code cited by the Virginia Code. Separately, entering another person's land or building for the purpose of damaging property is a Class 1 misdemeanor under a different provision found at law.lis.virginia.gov.
It remains unclear what led Maldonado Soriano to the statue Wednesday night, and police have not released a motive. No court date, plea, or case disposition has been reported, and it is not yet known what repairs, if any, are planned for the damaged monument.
