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- A 5-year-old in Kansas playing at a community center knocked over a one-of-a-kind statue.
- The unprotected work of art turned out to be valued at a whopping $132,000.
- The child's parents say that they cannot pay for damages, but the city could take legal action.
In a surveillance video from Overland Park, Kansas, you can see a 5-year-old child trying to "hug" a work of art during a wedding reception at Tomahawk Ridge Community Center. The statue quickly topples over, and luckily the child scrambles away without serious injury.
While no one was physically harmed, it turned out that the art, titled "Aphrodite di Kansas City" by the artist Bill Lyons, carried a $132,000 price tag, and the child's parents don't want to be held financially responsible.
Parents who let kid run amok in an art gallery stunned when held responsible for his destructive actions. Imagine! https://t.co/02SLvEhHKt#FoxNews
— John Stackhouse (@jgsphd) June 16, 2018
Put an expensive fragile piece of art in a community center unprotected, then charge people $132,000 if a kid bumps it? Sounds like a set up. Threw a ball through a window? Sure, bill the parents a couple hundred. But this is a joke.https://t.co/G6wuWBboRD
— 💀 (@dwntwnsean) June 17, 2018
The child's mother, Sarah Goodman (who you can see in surveillance footage sitting on a couch in the room where the incident happened), emphasized that her children were well-supervised and she should not be considered negligent under the common law in Kansas that holds parents responsible for supervision of minor children.
"It's clear accidents happen and this was an accident," Goodman told the Kansas City Star. "I don't want to diminish the value of their art. But I can't pay for that."
Those who share the parents' perspective wonder why such a hugely valuable work of art would be displayed without protective barriers around it. Unlike other pieces in the exhibition, the statue appeared to be unsecured and could have hurt the child as it fell.
All online debates aside, Overland Park, Kansas, the home of the community center, has filed an insurance claim that may compel the parents to pay up.
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