SAN ANTONIO (AP) -- It was no stray cannonball that a pair of pedestrians found while jogging through a park on San Antonio's northwest side Tuesday.
Rather, it was a relic of the Battle of the Alamo stolen from San Antonio's Fairmont Hotel last week.
Police spokeswoman Sandy Gutierrez says the pedestrians were jogging through O.P. Schnabel Park when they saw a plastic garbage bag on the ground. It bore a note stating "valuable artifact."
They took the ball to the hotel.
There, it was authenticated by the Institute of Texan Cultures as having belonged to Mexican Gen. Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna's forces during the 1836 siege of the Alamo.
The ball had been in a hotel display case for 23 years before the Dec. 22 theft.
(Copyright ©2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
