Tuesday, May 19, 2009
HIRAM, Ohio (AP) — Someone has beheaded a statue of President James Garfield that took its place last week at an Ohio college.
Hiram College spokesman Shawn Brown says the vandalism was discovered Friday morning, just a day after the sandstone statue was dedicated on the campus in Hiram, 30 miles southeast of Cleveland. Brown says the college is hoping the head will be recovered so the 95-year-old statue can be restored.
In the mid-1800s, Ohio native Garfield was a student and later the principal at the school that later became Hiram College. He was elected the nation’s 20th president in 1880.
Brown says police have no leads in their investigation of the damage to the statue, which was acquired for Hiram by a college trustee who found it recently on an eastern Ohio farm.