Lincoln Memorial Vandalized With Green Paint, Discovered by Tourists
Over the weekend the marble statue of the 16th President of the United States in Washington D.C. was vandalized. The Lincoln Memorial was splattered with green paint. Surprisingly enough, the damage was discovered not by police, but by tourists visiting the memorial early Saturday morning.
Jamie McDaniel, a 43-year-old matchmaker from Stafford, was showing an out-of-town friend around the Smithsonian early Saturday morning, according to The Washington Post. When they came upon the Lincoln Memorial around 1:30 a.m., McDaniel's friend was the first to notice something was wrong.
"Is that supposed to be there?" McDaniel said her friend asked, referring to the green paint.
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McDaniel responded, "No, this is a big thing." The tourists found a police officer right away.
The police officer "was in disbelief at first,'' McDaniel said. That is similar to how McDaniels herself felt.
"That's how I felt. Why would someone deface such an important part of American history like this? It's like someone burning a flag," she said.
Officials are just as puzzled as to why anyone would deface the Lincoln Memorial and how they were able to do so.
"The most outrageous part about this is it happened in the first place," said Michael F. Bishop, former executive director of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission. "Is the memorial not under guard? It's all very frustrating."
McDaniel is getting some credit from friends for having been the first to spot to vandalism.
"Our friends keep calling us the 'Scooby-Doo Gang' because we thought we could get to the bottom of it,'' McDaniel said.
