[imagesource:abcnews]

Eina, I don’t know which would hurt more – a statue falling on top of me, or getting slapped with a R1,8 million bill.

This little boy and his parents felt the might of both.

According to a report by Fortune, the Goodman family of Overland Park, Kansas was hit with a bill amounting to precisely R1 827 348, after their five-year-old son pulled down a statue in a community centre.

As seen from security footage below, young Troy Goodman and another child were playing in a public area of the Tomahawk Ridge Community Centre where he and his mother, Sarah, were at a wedding reception.

Goodman decided to get touchy-feely with a nearby sculpture, known as “Aphrodite di Kansas” [as pictured above], by stepping on the statue’s base and touching it.

That’s when Aphrodite was driven over the edge – literally:

Well, they did always say that the fall of Troy started with Aphrodite, so …

All jokes aside, the glass-covered sculpture did strike the boy in the face on its way down. His mother has claimed that since the incident occurred, her son has been having nightmares every night.

Not that it’s stopping the insurance company representing the city of Overland Park from suing his parents for a shit ton of money:

[After the incident] the Goodmans received a letter from an insurance company representing the city of Overland Park. The letter claimed that they were liable for damage to the statue because they weren’t monitoring their children closely enough, and put the price tag at R1 827 348.

Hoo boy, that is a hella steep price tag.

However, Sarah Goodman has rebutted claims of negligence, saying that “My children are well supervised, but all people get distracted”. She also reckons Aphrodite is the real danger:

[Goodman] points out that the sculpture was “not protected, not held down”.

That’s a fair point. Then again, the kid shouldn’t have been trying to pull down the bloody sculpture in the first place.

I guess the “look, but don’t touch” rule just didn’t apply that day.

[source:fortune]