Rachael Es­pinet

A stat­ue worth ap­prox­i­mate­ly $70,000 was dis­cov­ered stolen yes­ter­day from the Ch­aguara­mas Mil­i­tary His­to­ry and Avi­a­tion Mu­se­um.

And in an ap­par­ent weird sense of hu­mour, the thieves left an emp­ty beer bot­tle on the pedestal from where the heavy bronze bust was tak­en.

The bust, which weighed ap­prox­i­mate­ly a tonne, was of Gen­er­al Fran­cis­co de Mi­ran­da, who fought in the South Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion.

It was do­nat­ed to the mu­se­um in Ju­ly 2006 by the Venezue­lan Em­bassy. It was un­veiled on the bi­cen­ten­ni­al of his de­par­ture from Trinidad in 1806.

Lin­da Kelshall, pres­i­dent of the mu­se­um, yes­ter­day told T&T Guardian the bust was dis­cov­ered miss­ing around 9 am yes­ter­day when the mu­se­um opened. She said the mu­se­um does not open on Mon­days so it would have been stolen be­tween Sun­day night and ear­ly Tues­day morn­ing.

Kelshall said her hus­band Gay­lord Kelshall who is the founder of the mu­se­um, was dis­traught over the stolen stat­ue.

"He is in a mess. This mu­se­um is so im­por­tant to him and he can't be­lieve some­body would steal some­thing like this from us," told the T&T Guardian.

What's more dis­tress­ing to her, she said, is the fact that she be­lieves that the bust, which is made out of brass and cop­per and took four peo­ple to load on­to the pedestal, was tak­en to be sold for scrap met­al.

If any­one has in­for­ma­tion on the stolen bust, they could con­tact Kelshall at 722-8765.

This is the sec­ond ma­jor theft at the mu­se­um.

In Au­gust of 2013, thieves al­so broke in­to the mu­se­um and stole two his­toric weapons - a Japan­ese sword used in World War I in In­dia and a SAR gun.

Of­fi­cials at the mu­se­um said then that the thieves en­tered the com­pound and broke a glass case con­tain­ing the weapons.

The T&T Coast Guard sub­se­quent­ly re­moved the re­main­ing weapons un­til fur­ther se­cu­ri­ty could be put in place.

Se­nior tour guide at the mu­se­um, Natasha Har­ris, said then that the rea­son for the se­cu­ri­ty breach was be­cause the mu­se­um was un­der­fund­ed and un­der­staffed.

About the mu­se­um

Ac­cord­ing to its Web site, the mu­se­um opened to the pub­lic in 1992 and con­sists of 12,000 square feet of in­door dis­plays along with out­door items and memo­ri­als on a four-acre site.

Dom­i­nat­ing the out­door dis­plays is the pre­served Coast Guard 103 foot FPB TTS Buc­coo Reef along with a BWIA air­craft, ve­hi­cles and oth­er ar­ti­facts.

Get­ting it right

In an April 2 sto­ry on the probe in­to the death of ba­by Sime­on Cot­tle, head­lined "Pan­el Prob­ing Cot­tle's Death Re­ceives Over $1m," we in­cor­rect­ly re­port­ed that at­tor­ney De­bra Cory­at re­ceived $61,618.96 for her ser­vices. Ms Cory­at has since clar­i­fied that she was in fact paid the sum of $30,809.48. Our re­port was based on the de­tails of the pay­ment re­leased to par­lia­ment by the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al re­cent­ly. Our apolo­gies to Ms Cory­at for the er­ror.