A man has been charged in relation to the theft of a bronze sculpture from a Christchurch community centre which was allegedly turned into scrap metal.<\/p>\n
Acting Detective Sergeant Steph Trengrove said police were first alerted to the theft from the Mt Pleasant Community Centre on June 6. <\/p>\n
The sculpture, Flight, was created by renowned Christchurch sculptor Llew Summers in 2018 and was valued at $95,000.<\/p>\n
Standing at 2.2 metres tall and weighing 2.2 tonnes, the work of art depicts a large bird in flight. <\/p>\n
Flight was the final major bronze work completed by Summers before his death in 2019 at the age of 72.<\/p>\n
“The theft of the sculpture has deeply upset the community, and police have worked hard to locate the artwork and identify the person responsible,” Trengrove said.<\/p>\n
“Unfortunately, our investigation indicates that the sculpture has been destroyed and much of it sold as scrap metal, with only small pieces being recovered.”<\/p>\n
Police acknowledged the impact of its theft and alleged destruction on residents.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile we are pleased to have apprehended the offender, police acknowledge the devastation the residents feel in losing such significant artwork,” Trengrove said.<\/p>\n
“We would like to warmly thank key community members who assisted officers with information and support throughout the investigation, including those from the scrap metal industry.\u201d<\/p>\n
A 44-year-old man would appear in the Christchurch District Court on September 16 charged with theft. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man has been charged in relation to the theft of a bronze sculpture from a Christchurch community…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11316,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[307,304,305,306,11329,11328,308,93,61,60],"class_list":["post-11315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-christchurch-canterbury","tag-crime-and-justice","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11315\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}