Drunk at museum, broke statue and created US-China diplomatic incident: will plea bargain sentence

It will cost dearly for a Philadelphia young man’s night out at the museum, who in 2017 got drunk during an evening event at the Franklin Institute and broke a finger on a statue of a terracotta army knight loaned from China to the American museum. The young man, who was 24 years old at the time of the events, agreed to a plea deal, so he is expected to plead guilty on April 17 to the offenses attributed to him: he faces a maximum of two years in prison and a $20,000 fine.

The facts, as mentioned, date back six years: the Franklin Institute had organized an exhibition on terracotta warriors organized together with the Pacific Science Center in Seattle, displaying ten statues. On December 21, 2017, the young man attended a party at the museum: he got drunk and began wandering around the museum halls (which were open), took a selfie in front of one of the works, and then, as was observed in the videos of the museum’s surveillance system, as he was walking away he broke a finger on the state’s left hand and put it in his pocket. The museum did not realize this until January 8; however, it was easy to trace the perpetrator of the stunt by combining the images with the credit card details of those who had purchased tickets for the event. Eventually it turned out that the image of the broken finger had even been shared on Snapchat. So when an FBI agent showed up at the young man’s home, he quickly confessed to his crime and returned the finger, which he had hidden in his bedroom desk drawer.

The director of the Shaanxi Cultural Promotion Center (the museum that lent the sculptures for the exhibition), Wu Haiyun, protested strongly, demanding that the United States punish the culprit severely, and the city of Philadelphia had to pass a resolution to make an official apology to China. An initial trial was later overturned due to a miscarriage of justice, but during questioning the young man admitted he did not know why he had stolen the statue’s finger. And the debate at the time focused on one question: can an impromptu vandal who breaks a finger and steals it because he is drunk be compared to an art thief and punished in the same way? We will see what the court will determine next week.

Pictured is the damaged statue.

Drunk at museum, broke statue and created US-China diplomatic incident: will plea bargain sentence

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