Rachael Es­pinet

The stat­ue of Fran­cis­co de Mi­ran­da, which was stolen on Tues­day from the Ch­aguara­mas Mil­i­tary and Avi­a­tion Mu­se­um, was re­cov­ered on Wednes­day night along the road to Mac­queripe Bay.But while the stat­ue it­self was re­cov­ered the base of the bust re­mains miss­ing.The own­ers of the mu­se­um now es­ti­mate that re­pairs to the dam­aged stat­ue will cost ap­prox­i­mate­ly $15,000."I am so hap­py to get it back. It is nice to know we got it back.

"Ap­par­ent­ly he (Mi­ran­da) is hap­py be­cause he is smil­ing. My hus­band was re­al­ly in a mess when the stat­ue was stolen. Now he is so hap­py," mu­se­um pres­i­dent Lin­da Kelshall said yes­ter­day.On Tues­day mu­se­um staff were left in shock af­ter they dis­cov­ered the stat­ue was miss­ing. The thieves stole the bust some time over the long East­er week­end, it is be­lieved, and left an emp­ty beer bot­tle on the pedestal in its place.

Gen­er­al Fran­cis­co de Mi­ran­da was a war hero in the South Amer­i­can rev­o­lu­tion. The bust of his im­age was do­nat­ed to the mu­se­um by the Venezue­lan em­bassy in 2006 in ho­n­our of the bi­cen­ten­ni­al of Mi­ran­da's de­par­ture from Trinidad in 1806. Yes­ter­day, Kelshall said around 6.45 pm on Tues­day she re­ceived an anony­mous call from a pri­vate num­ber. The caller in­formed her if she drove along the road to Mac­queripe Bay she would find the stat­ue in the grass.

Kelshall alert­ed her staff and they made the trip and dis­cov­ered the bust un­der garbage bags in grass along the road­way."It will cost us some mon­ey to get it re­paired. We need to have it pol­ished. The dam­age to the head of the stat­ue will cost us $15,000 to get it back to the con­di­tion it orig­i­nal­ly was," Kelshall said.The on­ly part that was not re­cov­ered was the plate the bust was rest­ing on. Kelshall es­ti­mat­ed that the plate weighed a quar­ter tonne and she be­lieves it was sold for scrap met­al.

This was 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.Kelshall said yes­ter­day the mu­se­um would be im­prov­ing its se­cu­ri­ty to en­sure such an event did not oc­cur again. She said the mu­se­um planned to put the bust back on dis­play as soon as it was re­stored.