Baseball legend Jackie Robinson’s statue was stolen from a youth baseball facility in Kansas, specifically from League 42’s McAdams Park in Wichita where the heist was captured by Surveillance footage showing the thieves cutting the statue at the ankles, loading it onto a truck, and fleeing the scene.
According to reports, the stolen statue has been found but unfortunately, burned and broken in a trash can.
On Tuesday morning at around 8:38 a.m., the Wichita Fire Department received a report of a trash can fire at Garvey Park. Upon extinguishing the fire, authorities discovered what appeared to be fragments of the Robinson statue.
The report says the estimated cost of the damages is approximately $75K. According to Wichita police spokesperson Andrew Ford, the stolen statue is beyond repair.
Donations poured in Wednesday to replace a destroyed statue of Jackie Robinson on what would have been the 105th birthday of the first player to break Major League Baseball’s color barrier.
The total raised just through one online fundraiser surpassed $140,000, which is far in excess of the estimated $75,000 value of the bronze statue that was cut from its base last week at a park in Wichita, Kansas. Police are searching for those responsible.
Only the statue’s feet were left at McAdams Park, where about 600 children play in a youth baseball league called League 42, which is named after Robinson’ s uniform number with the Brooklyn Dodgers, with whom he broke the major leagues’ color barrier in 1947.
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