In Kansas Park, pieces of the Jackie Robinson statue have been found on fire.

In Kansas Park, pieces of the Jackie Robinson statue have been found on fire.

Police say that parts of a life-size bronze statue honoring Jackie Robinson, a famous baseball player and civil rights activist, were found broken down and on fire early Tuesday morning. The statue had been stolen out of a Kansas park last week.

At about 8:38 a.m., a city worker reported an explosion in a trash can at Wichita’s Garvey Park. That’s when police spokesman Andrew Ford said that pieces of the statue were found.

“As they looked at the damage, they found stolen pieces of a Jackie Robinson statue,” said the Wichita Fire Department.

He said that the police were called right away and picked up the pieces at the scene, saying that “unfortunately, the statue was beyond repair.”

Based on what Mr. Ford said, the police are still looking into it and have “already interviewed over 100 people.”

The fire department is additionally looking into the way the statue was taken apart and how the pieces got to where the fire was.

In the past, Mr. Ford had said that no one knew why the monument was stolen. League 42, the non-profit Little League which had the statue put up at McAdams Park in April 2021, said it was worth about $75,000.

He also said that arson investigators from the Fire Department are looking to the trash can fire. The police department said on Facebook that “additional parts that comprise the statue weren’t recovered at this time.”

Bobby Lutz, the head of League 42 (its name comes from the number Robinson wore), said in an interview on Tuesday that the incident has made people very angry.

Robinson broke the race barrier in baseball in 1947, becoming the first Black player in modern Major League Baseball. He became a symbol of optimism regarding equality between races in the country.

For many years after he stopped playing baseball, he worked on matters related to civil rights and broke down barriers in business, advertising, and broadcasting. Police haven’t given out suspect names or descriptions.

The search for a stolen statue of baseball’s groundbreaking star is over, but agents in Wichita, Kansas, say that the burned pieces found by firefighters mean that the tribute to Jackie Robinson can’t be fixed.

The life-size statue was discovered missing at a Wichita park and games complex five days later. Five days later, police said that the fire department got a call about a trash can fire.

When the fire was put out on Tuesday, workers saw what looked like burned pieces from the Robinson statue. Officials said they could not be saved. More pieces of the statue have not yet been found.

“The fire part of this incident is being looked into by arson investigators from the Wichita Fire Department,” said Andrew Ford, a spokesman for the police. He also said that more than one hundred people have been interviewed by the police.

A security video from early Thursday morning shows several people taking the sculpture away in the dark and putting it on a truck which was subsequently discovered abandoned.

Pics show that someone cut through the statue near its base, leaving only Robinson’s bronze baseball cleats.

Wichita Police Chief Joe Sullivan said that the case is moving forward thanks to a lot of media attention and that finding the people responsible is simply a matter of time.

Sullivan said, “Whether you stole the statue or accepted it, you were a part of destroying the statue.” “The best thing you could do is just turn yourself in.”

He said, “I hate to see how this statue is broken up.” “I do want every person to know that we are still determined to rebuild that statue and put it back in that spot for our community.”

The first statue was put up at McAdams Park in 2021 with the help of Wichita’s League 42, a youth baseball league named for Robinson, who was the first black player to play in Major League Baseball in 1947.

League 42’s website says that kids can play baseball without having to pay as much as they would in organized and recreational leagues.

The new statue will cost about $75,000, but Bob Lutz, the founder of League 42, said that the original model has already been found and will be used as soon as enough money is raised. Within a few months, the group hopes to show off the latest tribute to Robinson.