Liberty Returns to Brooklyn

New statue replaces kidnapped and beheaded replica

By SCOTT ROSS

Updated 7:30 AM EST, Mon, Jul 20, 2009

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Lady Liberty's torch shines anew outside the Brooklyn coffee shop from which she was abducted and ultimately beheaded, thanks to the generosity of a Greenwich Village restaurant.

Over the Fourth of July holiday weekend, an eight-foot Statue of Liberty was stolen from in front of the Vox Pop cafe in Ditmas Park. It was next seen just days later in a chilling video that showed Lady Liberty being beheaded by a masked monster wielding a chainsaw and a baseball bat.

Tom Kirk, a dining room manager at One if by Land, Two if by Sea, was so outraged and sickened by the statue's tragic demise, he knew he had to do something.

"I just thought it was a horrible, disgusting thing," Kirk told the New York Daily News. "I called my owners and said what do you think if we donate our statue. They were ready and willing to help."

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So Kirk and a team of Liberty-loving friends and co-workers lowered the statue from the roof of the restaurant and took her on a journey across the Brooklyn Bridge and to her new home in Ditmas park.

"For me, this is the bridge between the two restaurants," Vox Pop manager Debi Ryan told the Daily News. "It is the bridge between the two boroughs and it is also a bridge between all of us working together."