By Dean Sensui, Star-Bulletin
A rocky base is all that remains of the sculpture Jack Ryan
built in memory of Dana Ireland."This heinous crime just
blew me away," he said. "The only thing I could do
was start sculpting."

‘Slowly, someone
beat it to pieces’

An artist's monument and a
family garden in memory of
Dana Ireland are destroyed
on the Big Island

By Rod Thompson
Star-Bulletin

Big Island sculptor Jack Ryan says he was driven to erect a 3-foot-high monument to Dana Ireland on the bloody spot where she was found.

Someone else was apparently driven to destroy it.

Only the concrete base remains, but people continue to leave small offerings there such as flowers.

Ryan and his friend Marion Schat live less than half a mile from the site in Waawaa. Their dogs were going "absolutely crazy" the night Ireland was found, he said.

Two days later, Randy Coleman, husband of the nurse who aided Ireland as she lay dying, took him to the still blood-soaked spot.

"I couldn't believe it," he said. "I just could not believe it. No one can.

"This heinous crime just blew me away. The only thing I could do was start sculpting."

He created a monument like a headstone with two rising "wings."

"The spirit can fly now. She's free," he said.

At the core were steel plates and rebar and chains. Covering that was several hundred pounds of sculpted cement.

It was inscribed, "In memory Dana Ireland."

Ryan is disabled. "I can design. I can't lift."

On Christmas Eve 1992, the first anniversary of the attack on Ireland, Schat loaded the sculpture into a truck. They drove it to the fishing trail and cemented it in place.

Soon John Ireland got calls in Virginia.

By Rod Thompson, Star-Bulletin
The sculpture after it was placed on the spot
where Dana Ireland was found.

"I had a call a number of years ago from the owner of that property and he said, 'Get that memorial off,'" Ireland says.

"I said, 'What are you talking about?'

"He said, 'Well somebody's put something up there and I want it off.'

"I said, 'Well find who did it, not me.'"

Shortly after that a real estate agency called to get it off.

"I said, 'I don't know who put that in there. I've never seen it.'"

The monument stood undamaged at least until 1994.

That was when, driving home one day, Ryan saw a huge four-wheel-drive vehicle tearing out of the fishing trail, and checked the sculpture.

Someone had hooked a chain around it to pull it down, but with so much steel inside, it was only chipped.

But someone couldn't let it stand. Week by week, month by month, gradually it was destroyed.

"Slowly someone beat it to pieces," Ryan said.

Someone also wrecked two similar sculpted steel-and-concrete gates at Ryan's property.

Some neighbors suspected a real estate agent. Ida Smith, who lives nearby, suspects simple vandalism.

Five miles away, John and Louise Ireland also had made a simple rock-and-flower garden by the side of Kapoho Kai Drive where their daughter was hit by a car.

On a return trip to the island, they discovered someone had rammed a vehicle into the garden. Police told them it was deliberate.

Courtesy of John and Louise Ireland
3-year-old Dana on the patio of the
Irelands' home in Springfield, Va.

Tuesday, June 8 Blurred through the years is the real Dana. She lives on, though -- beautiful, shy, kind -- in the memories of those who knew her. The innocent. The indicted. Anatomy of a murder. The what and where of the attack. Who's who in the Dana Ireland tragedy. Wednesday, June 9 Help came too late for Dana Ireland. From the moment she was hit by her attackers' car until the time an ambulance reached her, more than two hours passed. Here's how minutes -- and a life -- were lost. Thursday, June 10 Life has gone on since the Dec. 24, 1991, attack. Memories have faded. Witnesses have scattered. But each twist and turn in the seven-year bid to bring to justice those responsible means fresh injury, not only to Dana's family but to witnesses whose lives have been put on hold by this on-again, off-again case.

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