On the eve of Memorial Day weekend, vandals raced their vehicle(s) through the new section of Village Cemetery in Jefferson. The cemetery is maintained by volunteers, who worked all week to mow and clean up the cemetery in time for Memorial Day weekend. They finished their work on Friday.
Sometime late Friday afternoon or Friday evening, someone spun up the turf on the new section of the cemetery, driving over burial plots where veterans from World War II, Korea, and Vietnam are buried. There are several gravesites in the new section of the cemetery that are marked by flat stones and do not have head stones.
Priscilla Bond, who has family members buried in the cemetery, said this is the second year in a row that someone has spun up the cemetery. “They took a truck and raced up through it. This is a cemetery where people who died for our country are buried,” Bond said at the Jefferson Memorial Day observance on Sunday.
The vehicle struck a tree at the edge of the cemetery. Apparently a window was broken out of the vehicle as pieces of tinted glass are located at the base of the tree, that had bark removed by the collision at a height of about 5 feet. Railroad ties that line the road of the cemetery were dislodged, and deep ruts were made on the cemetery lawn.
Anyone with information on who damaged the cemetery, please contact the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office.
