Stolen church statue returned
Less than a week after it went missing, the bronze Virgin Mary statue marking the front of Our Lady Queen of Angels Church is back.
The 4- to 5-foot figure was found in the yard of a Tustin woman who called police about it Wednesday morning.
The woman, returning from a trip, found the statue on her lawn and alerted police after reading a newspaper account of the theft. The statue went missing sometime between the evening of Nov. 14 and the morning of Nov. 15.
The woman’s teenage son apparently had friends visiting the house last weekend; at some point during the get-together, the statue arrived in the yard, said Newport Beach Police Lt. Craig Fox.
The woman, who police said asked to remain anonymous, did not realize the figure was stolen at first, so it stood in the middle of her lawn for several days. She is not a suspect in the theft, Fox said.
Newport Beach police returned the statue, worth an estimated $30,000, to the church; it apparently was undamaged.
-- Susannah Rosenblatt
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