Brazen thief takes statue of Lord Rutherford for a ride

A cyclist waited until the early hours of Friday before stealing a statue of Lord Ernest Rutherford, by tying rope around the statue and rocking it back and forth for half an hour until it snapped.

The statue of Rutherford as a child makes up part of a $400,000 monument at his birthplace, and has left the community of Brightwater near Nelson disappointed and in state of a disbelief, police say.

Caught on CCTV, the suspect is believed to be a male who approached the statue from Lord Rutherford Rd North at 1.50am, exiting about 2.40am, on the same road heading north.

Wakefield Constable Jamie White said the perpetrator tied rope around the statue and rocked it back and forth for about 30 minutes until it snapped.

They then managed to affix the statue to their bicycle and ride off. ‘‘It’s gutting to see something of such cultural significance taken like that,’’ White said.

His post about the theft on social media led to an ‘‘outpouring of disappointment and disbelief’’.

‘‘It’s certainly upset the community for something of such significance [to be stolen], not just on a local level, but on a national level – he’s one of our most famous icons.’’

It’s believed the perpetrator could be a local given their means of transport.

Ernest Rutherford is known as the father of nuclear physics. World-famous for winning the Nobel Prize in 1908 for his work explaining radioactivity and for ‘‘splitting the atom’’ in 1917, at the time of his death in 1937 Lord Rutherford was regarded as one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century.