Attack Damages Quantico Statue

A mission to repair a Marine Corps monument has been launched after police said they spotted a man attacking the Iwo Jima statue on Marine Corps Base Quantico with a sledgehammer. The nine-foot limestone sculpture, created over nine years by artist Felix de Weldon and long used as a ceremonial backdrop, sustained what authorities described as extensive damage, estimated in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, NBC News reports. Experts have been called in to assess how to fix it, a process that a museum official said will be complicated. Miguel Alonso Maldonado Soriano, 27, knocked the head off one of the figures late Wednesday, Prince William County police said.

A bayonet is missing from another Marine, per the Washington Post, and the helmet and face of a third was "chipped and gouged," the Virginia department said in a statement. Maldonado Soriano is jailed without bond on multiple felony charges; police have not suggested a motive. The limestone statue is a smaller version of the Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington that re-creates the photo by Joe Rosenthal on Feb. 23, 1945, of six Marines raising a US flag during World War II. Both statues were the work of de Weldon. The nonprofit Marine Corps Heritage Foundation announced it's begun a fundraising campaign to pay for repairs. "The damage to this monument does not diminish the legacy it represents," said retired Maj. Gen. James Lukeman, president of the foundation.