Tourist Shatters Historic Statue in 'Boneheaded' Selfie Attempt

24-year-old awaits trial
By Elizabeth Armstrong Moore,  Newser Staff
Posted May 9, 2016 8:50 AM CDT
Tourist Shatters Historic Statue in 'Boneheaded' Selfie Attempt
A passenger walks past parked trains at the Rossio Station in downtown Lisbon, Portugal.   (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

Portugal's revered King Sebastiao, also known as the child king, was crowned as a 3-year-old when his grandfather died in 1557. His father, having died two weeks before his birth, never got to meet the near-mythical figure. And now, reports the International Business Times, tourists are being denied a view of a 126-year-old statue of him outside Lisbon's Rossio Station thanks to a man who attempted to climb it and snap a selfie. Instead, of course, he knocked it over. The historic piece shattered—it looks like this now—and its now barren perch serves as a visual reminder that Dom Sebastiao himself was never found after he perished in the epic Battle of the Three Kings in Morocco in 1578.

The would-be selfie-taker, a 24-year-old man, allegedly fled the scene after last week's stunt, but he was quickly apprehended by local authorities and now awaits trial for the destruction of public property and presumably, as Vanity Fair reports, "flagrant boneheadedness." He is, incidentally, the same age as the Portuguese king was when he was last seen riding into a throng of enemy soldiers, notes Death and Taxes. (A 300-year-old statue suffered a similar fate at the hands of tourist selfie-takers in Italy almost exactly a year ago.)

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