Because people lost their sh*t over Baphomep being in a public space. The feels of the complainers made it comparable.
Your position on this issue is nonsensical.
You attempted to draw a parallel between a Muslim destroying a symbol important to many Christians, and a Christian destroying a symbol that has no religious meaning at all to the people who raised it, except insomuch as the statue itself served as an attack on Christians. The two situations are not remotely similar.
Of course the devil statue got some Christians riled up. That was the whole point of it. It was a direct and specific attack on Judeo-Christian symbols in public spaces by a bunch of people who didn’t believe in any religious symbols, including the one they erected. Their specific purpose was to put something offensive to Christians in a public space and pretend it was equivalent to the religious symbols that the Christians liked. This response to the devil statue doesn’t suddenly make it a religious icon to the people who built it.
A better analogy might be to ask people would feel if an atheist went to a Muslim majority country and erected a statue of a giant pig having sex with a woman in a Hijab to anger the Muslims. Although, I wonder what would get beheaded then …
This was a criminal act by someone looking for publicity for his campaign, and it looks like the guy is going to face some charges. Fine. I get the impression he was willing to accept those consequences for the benefit of the exposure.