Who’s BAD? Cheeky thieves have stolen the sunglasses from a statue of the late King of Pop.
The Smooth Criminals nicked the aviator eyewear from a cast of Michael Jackson.
He is captured in metal with outstretched arms on a plinth on a veranda in the Santa Marta slum overlooking the rest of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
So serious was the disappearance that officers from the favela’s resident UPP – the Pacifying Police Unit – swept the community’s shanty huts looking for the lost accessory but without success.
Tourist guide Thiago Firmino noticed the sunglasses had been wrenched off the Michael Jackson statue yesterday as he led visitors around the area.
He told O Globo newspaper: “I was walking with a group and when we got there to take pictures, where have the glasses of Michael Jackson gone?
“Everyone knows that image, all tourists want to visit the statue.
“It is a community asset that was vandalised.”
The statue was unveiled in 2010, one year after the King of Pop’s death at the age of 50 of a heart attack.
Jackson’s 1996 music video for his song They Do Not Care About Us video was shot in Rio de Janeiro.
It starred people from Santa Marta and brought the favela international fame.
Tuesday’s theft of statue spectacles was the second in the city in a week after louts hacked off those on the nose of a statue of Brazilian poet Carlos Drummond de Andrade.
There used to be a colour plaster and resin sculpture of Michael Jackson outside Fulham FC’s Craven Cottage football ground in west London that was introduced by the pop star’s friend and club owner Mohammed Al-Fayed in 2011.
It was removed by team’s new chairman Shahid Khan in 2013 and taken to be displayed at the National Football Museum in Manchester in 2014.
SOURCE: Daily Star
[…] Back in April, the Sunglasses were stolen and weirdly re-appeared few days later (here article). […]