The Wichita Eagle
(TNS)
Jan. 30—A Wichita youth-baseball league's Jackie Robinson statue — which was cut at its feet and stolen from McAdams Park last week, leading to a citywide manhunt and national media attention — was found charred and in pieces Tuesday morning in Garvey Park.
Garvey Park is in south Wichita, about seven miles from where it was stolen.
"It's not salvageable at this time," Wichita police spokesperson Andrew Ford said at a news conference at the park.
Council member Brandon Johnson said a new statue will be built. He urged people to contribute whatever they can to support that.
There is still a mold from the original sculptor, the late John Parsons, so the new statue will be identical, League 42 founder and executive director Bob Lutz said.
An online fundraiser has been set up to help replace the statue. It can be found at shorturl.at/dgAWZ.
First responders were called to a trash can fire at the park around 8:38 a.m. and found the statue. When firefighters extinguished the flames, they found pieces of the statue.
The statue, valued at $75,000, was dismantled before it was burned, Police Chief Joe Sullivan said.
He added "there will be arrests" and that it would be better for the people involved to come forward.
On Monday, police announced that they found what they thought was the truck used in the crime unoccupied somewhere in the city. The truck wasn't reported stolen and police have talked with the owner.
Sullivan wouldn't say if the owner of the truck was a suspect.
Ford said police have conducted close to if not over 100 interviews since the statue was stolen early Thursday morning. Vandals cut the statue at the feet and then loaded it in a truck and took off, according to surveillance video from WPD.
The statue was installed in spring 2021.
It was a focal point of League 42, a nonprofit organization that serves several hundred low-income youth in its baseball league every year.
Robinson, who wore No. 42, was the first Black player to break the racial barrier and play in Major League Baseball for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. The league is named after him.
It took years of work for the league to get approval for the statue to be created and installed.
Donations, large and small, have poured in from around the country to pay to repair or replace the statue. League founder and executive director Bob Lutz has said a Jackie Robinson statue would be a the park again one way or another.
On Saturday morning, about 80 people gathered amid frigid temperatures around the space where the statue had been.
Marcus Jones, 7, who is going to play baseball in the league for the first time this year handed Lutz $2 from his allowance to help the cause. Sullivan announced that, through a connection he had in Philadelphia, an anonymous former Major League Baseball player who won a World Series would donate $10,000.
The theft caused local and national outrage.
This story was originally published January 30, 2024, 10:45 AM.
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