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No Ten Commandments Monument Is Safe from the Wrath of Michael Reed

In 2014, he destroyed a Ten Commandments statue in Oklahoma. On Wednesday, he came for one in Arkansas.
Drew Schwartz
Brooklyn, US
Mugshot via the Pulaski County Sheriff's office and photo by Jill Zeman Bleed/AP

On Tuesday, an evangelical Arkansas state senator unveiled a brand new statue of the Ten Commandments at the Capitol in Little Rock. But in the early hours of Wednesday morning, some guy rammed into the thing with his car and reduced it to a pile of rubble.

According to the Arkansas Times, police arrested 32-year-old Michael Reed for the crime shortly after the incident. Reed's swift arrest may have something to do with the Facebook video that popped up on his account early Wednesday showing someone running over the monument in their car. He was also responsible for ramming into Oklahoma's controversial Ten Commandments monument back in 2014, Tulsa World reports. He later apologized and was reportedly diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder shortly after. Charges were never filed.

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In Wednesday's video, the driver is sitting inside of his sedan, listening to some epic electronic anthem, before gearing up with speed to barrel into the monument headfirst. He yells "freedom!" and steps on the gas, plowing into the roughly eight-foot-tall stone structure. The video then cuts to black.

A second video posted Wednesday provides a little more insight as to why Reed essentially decided to commit vehicular manslaughter against the 6,000-pound monument. Rather than driven by the intense desire to covet someone else's wife, it looks like he just wanted to protest what he saw as the unconstitutional collusion of church and state.

According to AP, Reed has been charged with defacing public property, criminal trespassing, and 1st degree criminal mischief. As for the future of the destroyed Decalogue, Arkansas Secretary of State's Office spokesman Chris Powell said, "The first thing will be to clean up the debris."

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