Veterans’ graves targeted by vandals in Mass. cemetery

Police are searching for the vandals who toppled headstones, shattered miniature statues and snapped flags on the graves of veterans buried in a Massachusetts cemetery over the weekend.

The damage to about a dozen graves at the Pleasant Hill Cemetery in West Bridgewater was discovered Sunday, just days ahead of Veterans Day, The Boston Globe reported.

Cemetery visitors on Monday were heartbroken to see the destruction of their loved ones’ graves.

“They knocked the stone completely over,” Jane Borus told CBS’s local affiliate. “I still get upset when I think about them and to have someone do this to them.”

Jane’s grandparents and father are buried at Pleasant Hill. Both her grandfather and father served in the military, CBS reported.

“It’s terrible. I don’t understand. I think they have entirely too much time on their hands. They have no respect whatsoever. They just don’t,” Ms. Borus said.

The cemetery is run by a nonprofit organization, staffed by volunteers, and is on private property.

Lauren Delaney, who sits on the board of the organization, said it isn’t the first time veterans’ graves have been defaced by vandals.

“Every time we’ve been hit in here it’s been right before a holiday — Veterans Day, Memorial Day, 4th of July and Labor Day,” she told CBS.

Ms. Delaney told Fox News’s Boston affiliate that the cemetery has been hit at least three times since 2012. More than two dozen headstones have been spray painted since then, and some of the oldest ones are nearly impossible to restore.

“Those were a lot of Civil War veterans, a lot of stones from the [1700s and] 1800s that can’t be replaced,” Ms. Delaney told Fox. “It’s heartbreaking. It really is. There’s no words for it.”

Police said they believe the vandals are children, but Ms. Borus said their ages shouldn’t matter. 

“They have to be held accountable for what they did. If they are going to do this, I don’t know what they’ll do later on,” she told CBS. 

Plymouth County Sheriff’s investigators tried to collect fingerprints from the stones. West Bridgewater police are asking the public for information about anyone seen in the area between Saturday night and Sunday morning.

Ms. Delaney set up a GoFundMe page to raise money to cover the cost of repairs as well as a security system for the cemetery.

She told CBS she would take the flags from veterans’ graves to remove the target.