An ISU student was arrested Tuesday night and charged with the theft of the head from Christian Petersen’s “Ring of Life” sculpture. Department of Public Safety officials charged Nick Johnson, senior in management information systems, with criminal mischief and theft. He was taken to the Story County Jail. “I’m very pleased to bring closure to the incident on behalf of the community, but it’s unfortunate the incident happened at all,” said Gene Deisinger, DPS special operations captain. Deisinger said DPS was able to charge Johnson because of phone calls from the community. “We received information from several different sources that said Nick Johnson was involved with the damage done to the sculpture,” Deisinger said. “I’m thankful to all community members who took it upon themselves to assist.” The stolen head of Petersen’s sculpture was found in six pieces about 4 a.m. Tuesday morning in LeBaron Hall’s first floor men’s restroom, DPS officials said. Deisinger said DPS received an anonymous call Monday morning from a person claiming to be the thief. The caller told DPS the head had been returned to a waste basket in a LeBaron Hall restroom. Deisinger said he and DPS officers searched all the garbage cans in LeBaron Hall, went through the LeBaron dumpster and went down to the Resource Recovery Center to find the missing head. “We waded through a mountain of garbage and could not find the head; the head was not where the person said it would be,” he said. DPS received a call about 4 a.m. Tuesday from Karen Carmody, the night-shift custodian in LeBaron Hall. She had located the pieces of the sculpture in the stainless-steel trash can in the men’s restroom, she said. “The minute I started taking it out of the wall I knew it was heavy and something was wrong,” she said. “I turned to my partner and said `Oh, oh, oh.'” Carmody said the black trash bag was not a university bag, but the paper towels that the pieces were wrapped in could be the university’s paper towels. Carmody said DPS had notified the custodial staff in LeBaron to be on the look out for the head. She said she was “relieved” the head had been returned. “I figured it would be in one piece,” she said. “I was upset it was in several pieces.” A DPS student officer found the headless sculpture 10 p.m. Thursday during the usual building lockdown. The headless statue is one of three children sitting around a fountain in the sculpture located in the south entrance to MacKay Hall. Mary Atherly, collections manager for University Museums, said she was “ecstatic” that the head had been returned. She has not had a chance to examine the pieces to see if they make up the full head. Police are keeping the pieces for now as evidence, she said. Atherly said two conservationists have worked with Petersen’s collection before and have shown interest in helping now. The first step will be to have the conservationists assess the damages to determine if the sculpture has to be removed from MacKay Hall to be repaired, she said. Omaha and Connecticut are the closest places that could do the repairs. “If we have to remove the sculpture, it will be very expensive,” she said. Aside from the cost of moving the sculpture, the university will pay conservationists close to $100 per hour in addition to the cost of supplies, she said. Atherly said it will cost more than $10,000 to fix the statue. “It’s mostly hands-on work, so we’re talking about a fair amount of money,” Atherly said.