INDEPENDENCE, Mo. (AP) — An Independence man was sentenced to seven years in prison for stealing a statue from a museum and trying to sell it for scrap.
Thirty-year-old Randy Perez was sentenced Thursday for his role in the theft of the Pioneer Woman statue from the National Frontier Trails Museum in Independence.
He was one of three people charged in the June 2013 theft of the life-size bronze statue of a woman with a baby in one arm and a bucket in the other. The cases against the other two suspects are pending.
The Independence Examiner reports that police believe the statue was destroyed and the three suspects tried to sell it to a recycling plant in Kansas City.
An artist has been commissioned to create a similar statue for the museum.