CALIFORNIA BRIEFING / LOS ANGELES
The statue of a gold prospector in the Carthay Circle area can’t catch a break, it seems.
Last year, thieves stole the 512-pound bronze statue from its perch at San Vicente Boulevard and McCarthy Vista before it eventually was recovered at a Los Angeles scrap yard.
Now, just months after it was repaired and reinstalled, someone sprayed graffiti on the monument. Resident Jon Armstrong said he noticed the word “Jew” scrawled on the prospector’s pan Monday during the Los Angeles Marathon and notified police.
The prospector was one of three public statues stolen in Southern California in a nine-month period in 2007 and 2008, including a 6-foot-by-4-foot bronze taken from its concrete stand in front of a business in Brea.
The high price of metals was believed to be the driving force behind the thefts.
-- Andrew Blankstein
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