Partygoer at US museum stole terracotta warrior’s thumb

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While on display at the Franklin Institute museum in the US city of Philadelphia, the thumb of a Chinese terracotta warrior statue was snapped off and taken away by a young partygoer, only retrieved weeks later by the FBI.

According to an FBI arrest affidavit filed on Friday, Michael Rohana, a 24-year-old man from the US state of Delaware, was attending a party held at the Franklin Institute on December 21 when he made his way into the museum's "Terracotta Warriors of the First Emperor" exhibition.

Surveillance cameras caught Rohana sneaking into the closed exhibition and taking a selfie with a 4.5-million-US-dollar terracotta warrior known as “The Cavalryman,” local news outlet Philly.com reported. He reportedly broke something off the statue’s left hand and left with the thumb shoved in his pocket.

"The Cavalryman" shown before and after the theft at the Franklin Institute museum /Beijing Youth Daily Photo

It took museum staff three weeks to discover that the treasure’s thumb was gone. On January 8, the FBI received a report from the museum and sent its art crime team to track down the suspect five days later at his home in Bear, Delaware.

Rohana confessed and turned in the stolen thumb on the spot, FBI authorities said. A US attorney has decided to charge him with theft of a major artwork from a museum, concealment of major artwork stolen from a museum, and interstate transportation of stolen property.

Philly.com quoted a spokeswoman from the Franklin Institute saying the thumb and the warrior would be reunited, and the statue repaired.

The exhibition "Terracotta Warriors of the First Emperor" is on loan to the Franklin Institute museum through March 4. /The Franklin Institute Photo

The terracotta warriors are a vast collection of military-styled art works buried with an emperor in 210–209 BCE. Discovered by farmers in Xi’an, northwest China in 1974, they are usually stored in a huge museum in Xi’an. However, there have been many showings of terracotta warriors abroad, including a current exhibition at the World Museum in Liverpool, UK.

The Cavalryman was one of 10 warriors put on display at the Franklin Institute in September. The statue’s left thumb was broken during excavation and was restored before the US exhibition.

On Saturday, the exhibition’s Chinese host, the Shaanxi Cultural Heritage Promotion Center, told Beijing Youth Daily that the Franklin Institute had admitted to security flaws and apologized.

The center expressed shock and anger about the incident and called for tighter security when terracotta warriors are loaned to other museums abroad.

(With inputs from Xinhua)