The life-size bronze tribute to the legendary baseball player who broke the color barrier was stolen from a different park last week. What was left of it “is beyond repair,” officials said.
Parts of a life-size bronze statue that celebrated the legacy of the legendary baseball player and civil rights figure Jackie Robinson were found dismantled and burned early Tuesday after it had been stolen from a Kansas park last week, the authorities said.
Remnants of the statue were found after a city worker reported a fire in a trash can at Garvey Park in Wichita at around 8:38 a.m., Andrew Ford, a police spokesman, said in a statement.
The Wichita Fire Department responded and, “while assessing the damage, they found pieces of the Jackie Robinson statue that had been stolen.”
The Fire Department immediately notified the police, who collected the pieces at the scene, he said, noting that “unfortunately, the statue is beyond repair.”
The police are continuing to investigate, Mr. Ford said, and they have “already interviewed over 100 people.” The department is also looking into how the statue was dismantled and how the pieces ended up at the location of the fire. Mr. Ford had previously said that the motive for the theft of the monument was not known.
Additionally, the Fire Department’s arson investigators are looking into the trash can fire, he said. In a statement posted on Facebook, the department said that “additional parts of the statue have not been recovered at this time.”
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Source: Elections - nytimes.com
