A 800-pound cannon that was part of Wichita’s Spanish-American War Memorial went missing from Central Riverside Park on Thursday; It was later found damaged.
According to the City of Wichita, the 231-year-old cannon was captured in Cuba during the Spanish-American War in 1898, and presented to the citizens of Wichita by Mayor Finlay Ross in 1900.
The cannon, cast in Seville, Spain, disappeared sometime Wednesday morning; the memorial site is on Murdock, west of Nims.
Doug Ballard discovered it was gone; he’s lived in the neighborhood for 50 years and rides his bike through the park daily, so he noticed when something was wrong with one of his favorite sites when he drove by on Thursday.
Ballard thinks it was taken during daylight hours.
“If you go over here and look, you’ll see where they laid rubber when they left. Why? I don’t know, unless they were in a big hurry, and they broke the curb,” he said.
Police narrowed down the search after interviewing dozens of neighbors, eventually locating the cannon around 5:00 p.m. at a home in the 2000 block of N. Woodland, south of the Little Arkansas River.
“Unfortunately, the cannon is significantly damaged,” the Wichita Police Department said on Facebook.
After further investigation, a 37-year-old man from Wichita was arrested in the 2300 block of N. Amidon, on suspicion of felony theft, vandalism, possession of methamphetamine, and arrest warrants.
Police Capt. Ronald Hunt said, just a year after the destruction of the Jackie Robinson statue in N. Wichita, it’s depressing to see another similar situation.
“It’s disheartening that it affects our community. Seeing the memorial as I would come to the park with family and just see it gone now is sad,” Hunt said.
Ballard says it’s a head-scratcher in disbelief why someone would damage Wichita history.
“That’s a cannon from well before 1898, it’s irreplaceable. I guess you can’t rule anything out anymore,” he said.