Cemeteries tend to be a place for comfort and closure for some, but when one Lubbock woman went to visit her mother’s grave over the weekend, she came across an unpleasant surprise.
“My sons and I went to my mom’s graves site, which is it at Resthaven and we went over there to put some flowers down and when I walked over I noticed that the metal urn was missing,” said Allison Hoffman, who would place bouquets of flowers in the urn. Where the urn should have been is now a gaping hole in the ground
“I looked down to see perhaps to see if there was a remnant or something from it and all I could see was a bunch of roaches, and I felt uncomfortable putting the flowers there with the roaches, so I just put it behind their marker.”
Hoffman believes the location of her mother’s grave being so close to 19th street may have presented it as an easy target for a thief. Resthaven does not have any security cameras or fencing around the property, something Hoffman says she’d like to see changed.
Management at Resthaven says they will not be putting up any fencing so as to not deter any visitors from coming to visit their loved ones at any time of the day. While they do not have security cameras up, staff does patrol the property throughout all times of the day.
John Jones, the sales manager of Resthaven provided a to EverythingLubbock regarding Mrs. Hoffman’s mother’s missing urn:
“We’re here to help Mrs. Hoffman any way we can, if she’ll call me, we’ll be happy to order a replacement at our actual cost and help here in anyway that we can, including how to tell her how to utilize her insurance for this theft.”
Lt. Ray Mendoza with the Lubbock Police Department says that while cemetery crimes like this aren’t common, they do happen from time to time.
“It’s one of the more heartless types of crimes,” said Lt. Mendoza who says thieves who typically steal from grave sites like this will try to sell the metal for scraps. “You’re on the edge there of people who might still be grieving for family members, people who are still coming regularly to visit the graves and spent a lot of time and effort to keep the sites well-manicured and well-kept and then to have someone and actually desecrate it is very heartless and quite shameful.”
If caught, Mendoza says the thief will face a Class B misdemeanor. If you know any information that may be useful to either Mrs. Hoffman’s family or police, you can anonymously contact Crimeline at 806-741-1000.
