The Stolen Jackie Robinson Statue Saga Concludes: Kansas Man Gets 15-Year Prison Sentence – Essence

The man who vandalized a bronze statue of Jackie Robinson, cutting it at the ankles and removing it from its base at a Kansas park, has been sentenced to 15 years in prison and ordered to pay $41,500 in restitution.

In February, 45-year-old Ricky Alderete was charged “with felony theft, aggravated criminal damage to property and giving false information in connection with the crime.” He pled guilty in May to the theft of the baseball legend’s statue in addition to other charges. The majority of the 15-year-long prison sentence the judge handed down “stemmed from a case of aggravated burglary that happened Feb. 1, after the theft of the statue on Jan. 25. Alderete was also on probation for another case when the statue disappeared,” according to The New York Times.

In court, Alderete blamed his crimes on a fentanyl addiction. “I let fentanyl take over me and made a lot of poor decisions. I am not going to deny that. I never meant to hurt anybody,” said Alderete. “I am embarrassed, I’m ashamed. Whatever you do today I accept.”

As ESSENCE previously reported, the statue “was stolen from McAdams Park’s League 42 youth baseball facility” then found “dismantled and burned” earlier this year in January. The only thing left behind of the statue was the replica of Robinson’s cleat-encased feet cast in bronze, and the case made international headlines.

The League 42 youth baseball league’s namesake is the number Robinson wore with the Brooklyn Dodgers, the team he played for when integrating the MLB in 1947.

Initially, many believed this to be a possible hate crime, but after investigating the evidence did not support that theory. Wichita Police Department’s Lt. Aaron Moses stated, “Instead, we believe this theft was motivated by the financial gain of scrapping common metal.”

Surveillance footage showed there were at least two others present on the scene. The video from the morning of Jan. 25 “showed two figures severing the statue with a concrete saw outside McAdams Park in Wichita and then placing it in the bed of a truck that was eventually linked to Mr. Alderete…Text messages reviewed by investigators showed Mr. Alderete telling a friend about a stolen chunk of bronze weighing 250 to 350 pounds, according to court records,” The New York Times reports.

Per Alderete’s messages, “I am on my way to the scrap yard now so that we can process the scrap and get paid.”

Even though a city worker later found statue parts in a burning trash can, the statue was deemed as irreparable.  

Following the statue’s disappearance, League 42, which primarily serves low-income youth baseball players, received an influx of donations to replace the statue, amounting to over $700,000 including a $100,000 donation from the Major League Baseball. There will be a new replacement of the civil rights legend’s statue that was fashioned from the original mold.

According to the Associated Press, “the bronze cleats that were left behind when the original statue was stolen are now on display at the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Missouri.”