ROXBURY – Nine-year-old Nick Gallant was very depressed Friday morning over something the Roxbury youth couldn’t fathom.

His new $1,500 go-kart birthday present, which was stolen on July 28, three days before his birthday, turned up Friday at his father, David Gallant’s, discount furniture store on Route 120 in Roxbury.

A man out riding an all-terrain vehicle on or near a mountain in East Andover found the demolished red and silver Yerf-Dog go-kart, David Gallant said.

It had been spray-painted black. The front axle had been bent up and twisted. A front tire rim and parts of the engine were mangled. The frame and roll bars were dismantled and twisted. The twin seats had been ripped out.

There were even three evenly spaced bullet holes in the go-kart’s muffler.

The man who found the debris – whom David Gallant declined to identify – hauled it to his house, loaded it onto a flatbed trailer and delivered it to Gallant’s store by 11:30 a.m. Friday.

“I was not very happy,” Nick Gallant said when he saw the junked go-kart shortly afterward. “It was the worst day of my life.”

David Gallant said his son burst out crying upon seeing the damage.

“At first, I wasn’t too sure it was mine. But I can tell by the automatic (ignition) switch,” the child said.

He then showed his mother, Libby Donahue, where the now missing block of wood was that allowed him to reach and depress the brake pedal.

“This is the worst day of my life, mum,” he said.

Donahue said her son kept the go-kart beside his playhouse at the Gallant’s camp at Roxbury Pond.

“We got up one morning and it was gone,” she said Friday. “He cried and cried. He was very upset. But he was more upset today when he saw it. We’re still in shock here.”

After it was stolen, David Gallant had offered a $100 reward for information on whoever stole the go-kart. He tried to give the reward to the man who found the demolished vehicle.

It was refused. So the money was added to another $100 that David Gallant posted for information leading to the arrest and conviction “of whoever did this to my kid.”

He then said that the wrecked go-kart would remain in front of his store until police catch the thieves who stole and wrecked it.

“I put it there so people could see what bad people do to good people,” David Gallant said.

“They are nasty people. I hope the cops will get them,” Nick Gallant added.

The family is out the price of the go-kart because their homeowner’s insurance won’t cover it, David Gallant said.