Sgt. Matthew Fenton was killed in Iraq and the Little Ferry resident was honored with a statue erected at the local school, and a lowlife thug decided to steal the memorial to sell it for scrap:
The suspect, Vincent J. McManus, told police he took the statue to sell for scrap metal — only to discover later that it was made of glazed concrete, police said.Fenton sought to become a Little Ferry police officer, and he was posthumously made a member of the Little Ferry police department.
The statue of a soldier was recovered yesterday in McManus’ back yard, where it was hidden under a garbage can, Lt. Frank Novak said. The only damage is a broken finger, he added.
The statue was reported missing from its base in front of Memorial School on Sunday morning, Novak said, and Police Chief Ralph Verdi made its recovery the department’s top priority.
Officer Michael Hinchcliffe worked with school officials Monday to look at tapes from the building’s security camera.
Those tapes showed a man driving up to the school on Liberty Street in a dark-colored pickup truck about 11:45 p.m. Saturday and grabbing the three-foot-tall statue, which was not attached to its pedestal, Novak said.
Fenton, who attended Memorial School, was wounded in April 2006, when a suicide bomber attacked his Humvee in Al Anbar province in Iraq. The shrapnel left the 24-year-old with severe head trauma, and he died nine days later at National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., a day after receiving a Purple Heart. He never regained consciousness.
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