$2,500 reward for information on memorial statute stolen from Pasadena sports complex

PASADENA, Texas (KTRK) -- A heartbroken father is offering a $2,500 reward for the return of a memorial statue dedicated to his late son.

The statue of Kipper Mease, an avid athlete, was sawed off at the base and stolen sometime on Sunday from the Kipper Mease Sports Complex in Pasadena.

Mease was killed in a car crash in 1982 when he was 20.

"It breaks my heart," Mease's father, Roy, a former Port of Houston commissioner, said.

"It never entered my mind, frankly, that anybody would take it," Roy said.

Bridgette Mongeon, the sculptor who created the statue, is just as mortified. It was her first public piece in Houston.

"It is somebodys child and to see it so violently attacked I just, I cant believe it," Mongeon said.

The statue is cast in bronze, towers several feet high, and weighs several hundred pounds.

"Awful lot of work to cut that thing down, to carry it out, get it smelted for $200 or $300, I mean," Roy said.

If Roy can't get the original statue back, he's willing to pay for a replacement.

"We do have the mold, I think, but the mold the piece was done so long ago that the rubber is probably not any good," Mongenon said. "But we still have a way we can reproduce it."

"I guess my greatest wish now is just (that) I (will) live long enough to see it stuck back up there," Roy said.

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