Less than 24 hours after it was erected, a newly placed 10 Commandments monument at the Arkansas State Capitol was destroyed Wednesday by an unstable motorist who once claimed to be a Satanist.
Michael Tate Reed Jr. drove through the stone structure, filming the destruction on his mobile phone and uploading the footage to Facebook.
“Freedom!” Reed can be heard shouting in the early morning recording, right before slamming his Dodge Dart into the three-ton granite monument, The Washington Post reported.
Before getting behind the wheel, Reed can be heard addressing the camera directly, saying that he planned to destroy the statue because it violates the constitution.
“One thing I do not support is the violation of our constitutional right to have the freedom that’s guaranteed to us, that guarantees us the separation of church and state, because no one religion should the government represent,” Reed told viewers.
Governor Mike Huckabee was not at all enthused.
“Some idiot in my home state broke all 10 commandments at the same time. He wasn’t Moses and it wasn’t Mt. Sinai,” Huckabee tweeted on Wednesday.
Reed, who faced multiple charges for destroying a 10 Commandment monument at the Oklahoma State Capitol, has a history of mental health issues. During an interview with the Secret Service in Oklahoma City in 2014, Reed reportedly said “voices in his head” and “Satan” instructed him to urinate on the monument, and to “smash it.”
Reed reportedly told law enforcement that he was a Satanist who had been diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder, and was off his medication.
This article was featured in the InsideHook newsletter. Sign up now.
