WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — A convicted sex offender has been ordered to spend a year and three months in prison in the theft of a nearly life-sized carved clown that was the mascot of a closed Kansas amusement park.
Forty-one-year-old Damian Mayes was sentenced Tuesday in Sedgwick County, where he pleaded no contest in October to felony theft.
Louie the Clown and other items missing from the one-time Joyland Amusement Park in Wichita were found in February 2015 at Mayes’ home. Mayes was an employee of the park who helped build and repair organs. He also helped restore the clown that played an automated organ near Joyland’s entrance for decades before the park closed in 2006.
The clown statue disappeared from Joyland sometime in 2005 or 2006 and was officially reported stolen in 2010.