NORTH CHARLESTON — The saga of a missing 1,000-pound statue stolen from a Boy Scouts office over Memorial Day weekend took the oddest of twists.
It apparently showed up at a scrap yard … that later caught fire.
It ended up in about 50 pieces, cut up by its thief.
Still, the Boy Scouts have it back, they say.
No arrests have been announced after someone took the 6-foot-tall figure, cut it up (possibly with a concrete saw) and tried to sell it to B&D Auto and Scrap Metal.
The business is the same place where firefighters spent most of June 1 trying to put out an unrelated blaze that started with an exploding junked car.
B&D’s marketing director Kimberly Strobel said it wasn’t the day she envisioned.
“Definitely not,” she said.
The morning started out when a man showed up at the yard trying to sell metal, she said. A cashier went out to inspect the load on the scales, confirmed it appeared to be a cut-up art piece, and said “no sale.” Cameras captured his arrival, Strobel said.
A police alert had already been issued for the statue, a depiction of a scout that had stood near the entrance to the Coastal Carolina Council BSA Service Center on Medical Plaza Drive for years.
It was last seen on the afternoon of May 27, just ahead of the Memorial Day break.
With the scrap yard sale negated, the man left. B&D called police.
A short while later, the fire broke out.
At about the same time the scouts had upped their reward for the missing sculpture from $1,000 to $5,000.
CCC Scout Executive Jason Smith said the bronze figure was designed by artist R. Tait McKenzie in 1937. It has been described as a cornerstone of the North Charleston branch since its creation.
“Many of the people involved with the chapter are devastated by the loss of the statue,” Smith said June 1, before the pieces were back in the their possession.
“We do not know why someone would take it,” he added. “It is irreplaceable and has been everything to us for decades.”
A police incident report said the statue was fastened to its base by four bolts. Two bolts seemed to be “ripped off” while the other two were “cut,” the report stated.
A spokesman did not have any additional information on the case.
Smith later confirmed to The Post and Courier the pieces were back in the scouts’ possession but he did not disclose how they came back.
The cause of the B&D fire has not been determined. No injuries were reported. It was put under control with multiple water streams and was kept from spreading to a nearby fuel tank, the Fire Department said.