A gang of thieves have stolen rhino
heads and horns worth up to half a million euros (£428,000) from an Irish
museum. Three masked men entered the National Museum Archives building in Dublin at
about 22:40 BST on Wednesday and tied up a security guard.
The gang loaded the four heads, with eight horns, into a large white van. The security guard, who was not injured, managed to free himself and raise
the alarm shortly after midnight.
A police spokesman said the building on Balheary Road, Swords, has been
sealed off for forensic examination. An incident room has also been set up at Swords Garda (police) station and
officers have appealed for information about the theft.
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Nigel Monaghan, keeper of the museum's natural history division, said staff
had taken the decision to remove its rhino horn collection from public display
in 2011, following a spate of "smash and grab" thefts from museums across
Europe. The artefacts had been placed in the museum's storage facility in Swords for
safe keeping when the thieves struck.
2 comments:
What a shame that people still believe that rhino horns and shark fins have magical properties. Without that ignorance, those species would not be endangered.
Maybe we should start replacing the horn of stuffed and mounted rhinos with an toxic look-a-like.
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