Police search for cemetery vandals

BEDFORD TOWNSHIP (NEWSCHANNEL 3) - In Calhoun County police are searching for vandals after headstones were toppled at two separate cemeteries.

Police say sometime over the weekend the vandals hit the Bedford Cemetery just off M-37. Headstones are on their sides and urns were broken. This is the second cemetery in the area to be vandalized in the past week.

Across town Oak Hill Cemetery has been hit twice.

"I'm six feet, so it's five feet from the base. That's a job to set that back up," said Dick Roe. Roe estimates the monuments weigh in at 1,500 pounds. He says it takes a lot of work to knock them down. "I don't know why they do it, what they get out of it."

Last week vandals toppled a hundred headstones at Oak Hill Cemetery. A crew worked all day Monday to get them repaired.

To Roe's surprise he came back Monday night to find more damaged.

"And about 30 more, some of them the same ones had been tipped over," said Roe.

The 163-year-old cemetery had been hit twice in just four days. "It's disheartening. I've been here a lot of years. You try to keep an old cemetery like this looking well," said Roe.

Bedford Cemetery had a similar incident over the weekend. Urns and headstones were destroyed. "This is the face of this marker and they finished pulling it off," said Kevin Dezotell. "We'll have to take this seal off there and just reseal the stone and put them back on."

Police are looking for the culprits in both crimes.

"It's a very tragic thing to have headstones damaged. Family being very upset, understandably," said Lt. Duane Knight of the Battle Creek Police. "Who does that? I don't know. If we knew, I guess we'd get them."