OVERLAND PARK, Kan. — At Coach's Bar & Grill on College Boulevard, Royals and Chiefs sports memorabilia can be seen almost nearly everywhere. But the autographed Travis Kelce jersey that greeted customers is gone, stolen overnight.
"It was the first piece of artwork up in the whole building," Katie Ramirez, a manager at Coach's Bar & Grill, said.
Ramirez showed up Sunday morning to find the front door at 6700 College Boulevard open.
She also found broken glass from the frame that had kept the jersey in the same condition it was in when a owner Brian Darby received it from a customer. It had been a part of the Coach's scenery since the bar and grill was located 103rd Street, before that location flooded in 2017.
"It's pretty upsetting," Ramirez said, "especially since Coach's has had a lot of punches thrown at them throughout the years and it kind of sucks," Ramirez said.
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Whoever took the jersey also tried -- unsuccessfully -- to break into the bar's safe.
Overland Park police collected evidence to find the person who did this, but employees have a hunch based a strange observation before they closed for the night.
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"And I'm sitting over here and charging my phone and look over and there's this dude taking a picture of it and says (expletive) it, I should just steal this," Melissa Surber, another manager at Coach's Bar & Grill, said. "And I looked at him, and he looked at me like-I was like-and then he went out to his car and sat out there for an hour."
Since the burglary, staff have drawn in a jersey of No. 87 but hope someone, maybe Chiefs Kingdom, can replace it with the real thing.
"It's been a frustrating year to say the least," Brian Darby, owner of Coach's Bar & Grill, told 41 Action News. "And we're just kind of struggling to get through the finish line. And then something like this happens. It's not fair, but it's kind of the way the world is right now."
To make matters worse, Darby said he doesn't have the money right now to make permanent repairs to the damage done in the burglary.
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