Kid knocks over unsecured $132,000 statue. Now they want his parents to pay.

Who's at fault here?
 By 
Brian Koerber
 on 

A family may be responsible for a pricey statue their child knocked it over at the Tomahawk Ridge Community Center in Overland Park, Kansas.

According to Sarah Goodman, the child's mother, the incident occurred last month at a wedding reception, local outlet KSHB reports.

A security cam captured the whole thing, and shows the kid hug the statue before walking away. The child later returns to the statue, and appears to hang onto it. The statue falls over, and the young boy goes along with it.

The statue was not barricaded in any way.

“We heard a bunch of commotion and I thought, ‘Whose yelling at my son?’” Goodman said. “This glass mosaic torso is laying on the ground and someone is following me around demanding my personal information.”

Eventually the family received a letter from an insurance company saying they were responsible for the statue because they neglected to monitor their children.

“My children are well supervised but all people get distracted,” Goodman told KSHB.

In her defense Goodman brings up a good point -- why was this super expensive statue that could easily be toppled just sitting there without even a rope around it?

“It’s in the main walkway. Not a separate room. No plexiglass. Not protected. Not held down,” she said. “There was no border around it. There wasn’t even a sign around it that said, ‘Do not touch.’”

Sean Reilly, a spokesperson for the City of Overland Park claims the sculpture was never meant to be touched, and said there's a "societal responsibility that you may not interact with it if it’s not designed for interaction."

“It was a piece that was loaned to us that we are responsible for. That’s public money,” Reilly said. “We are responsible to protect the public investment.”

One may argue that the "societal responsibility" to keep a child safe from a statue that could easily topple over is more important than protecting a piece of art.

Goodman said she's attempting to see if her homeowner's insurance will cover the cost of the statue, adding that the 132,000 price tag is "completely astronomical."

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Brian Koerber

Brian was the Culture Editor and has been working at Mashable on the web culture desk since 2014.

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