Man Smashes Ten Commandments Monument, Streams Incident on Facebook Live
A man crashed his vehicle at the new Ten Commandments monument early Wednesday morning outside the state Capitol in Little Rock, Arkansas, less than 24 hours after the privately funded monument was erected. Police arrested a male suspect who posted a Facebook Live video of the incident.
The live stream showed the view of a man from behind the wheel of his vehicle. The car radio was turned on and the female DJ was heard saying: "Where do you go when you're faced with adversity and trials and challenges?" The driver shouted: "Oh my goodness. Freedom!" before ramming his car to the monument.
The granite slab was knocked from its plinth and smashed to pieces. The man recorded the incident on Facebook Live which gave him away. Within hours, the police arrested 32-year-old Michael Tate Reed of Van Buren in Arkansas. The arrest report listed him as unemployed/disabled.
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Reed was taken in for defacing an object of public interest, criminal trespass, and first-degree criminal mischief. He had a prior arrest in October 2014 also for defacing a Ten Commandments sculpture in Oklahoma. His family claimed he had bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.
Oklahoma County District Attorney David Prater didn't pursue charges against Reed back then as the offense was merely a property crime. "Had it been a violent crime where he had harmed another person, burglarised someone's home or something like that, I would have been forced to handle the case differently," he said.
The 6,000-pound monument was installed at the Capitol's southwest lawn on Tuesday morning with no ceremony. The American History and Heritage Foundation, which raised money for the monument, has ordered a replacement which would take a few months to fabricate.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which was against the monument's installation due to what it claims as an unconstitutional endorsement of religion, condemned the incident which it called an illegal act of destruction or vandalism. "The ACLU remains committed to seeing this unconstitutional monument struck down by the courts and safely removed through legal means," it added.
