Wichita man sentenced for destroying historic cannon stolen from war memorial
A man convicted of stealing and destroying a priceless Spanish-American War cannon from a memorial at a Wichita park in April has been sentenced to four years, five months in prison.
Gordon L. Pierce III, 38, also owes $320,500 in restitution to the city of Wichita over the theft, Sedgwick County District Attorney’s Office spokeswoman Lyndsee Stover said after his sentencing hearing Friday.
Pierce pleaded guilty on Oct. 10 to felony theft and aggravated criminal damage to property, court records show.
He told Wichita police he stole the unique teal-colored, 800-pound cannon from Central Riverside Park, 720 N. Nims, to pay off a drug debt after some friends robbed him of $20,000 worth of methamphetamine. He told police he came across the cannon on April 2 while he was looking for copper statues to scrap after his drug dealer threatened to shoot him and his family for losing a pound of meth that he was supposed to sell, a probable cause affidavit says.
After enlisting the help of a homeless man to fasten chains around the cannon, Pierce yanked it from its pedestal with an SUV and dragged it more than a mile to a friend’s house where he spent hours sawing it apart, the affidavit says.
Wichita police found the destroyed cannon in the garage after following a series of gouge and teal-colored drag marks on the street between the park and the friend’s house.
The cannon, forged for the king of Spain in 1794, was the centerpiece of the Spanish-American War Memorial at Central Riverside Park. It was gifted to the city and installed in 1901 after being taken as a wartime trophy by American soldiers in Cuba three years earlier, in 1898.
Among its unique features was an intricate filigree design of the Spanish king’s seal hand-carved into its muzzle.
