In a video, which was livestreamed and posted online, a group of young men drive from southern California to tear down the structure. Under cover of darkness, they hike up to the structure and tear it down while chanting “Christ is king!”. They then erect a homemade wooden cross in its place and drag the remains of the monolith down the mountain to their car.
“We are upset that these young men felt the need to drive five hours to come into our community and vandalize the monolith,” Atascadero’s mayor, Heather Moreno, said in a news release. “The monolith was something unique and fun in an otherwise stressful time.”
That original monolith – which attracted hundreds of curious sightseers and garnered headlines worldwide – was also destroyed by visitors who were captured taking it down and carrying it away by an observer’s mobile phone video.