When Celia Schreiber went to pay her respects to her late husband Joe at the Prince George cemetery Sunday afternoon, she was shocked to find his headstone laying on the ground.
The Schreiber marker was one of eight knocked down over the weekend by someone who drove a vehicle right through the grounds, leaving a path of destruction in their wake.
"I went to visit the site and I was very sad to see the damage," Schreiber said.
The disturbed headstones are all located in the northwest section of the grounds.
City cemetery supervisor Chris Bjorn said it's rare to see vandalism of this scale at the site.
"You get the odd one, where someone walking through and pushes over a headstone," he said. "But this was an actual vehicle that drove in, passed the end of the roadway and through, and basically tried to weave their way out and in the process left a path of knocked over headstones."
Aside from Remembrance Day events, there were no city cemetery staff working on the long weekend so work began Tuesday morning to assess the damage and contact surviving relatives of those with disturbed headstones.
Bjorn said seven of the eight markers that were knocked over didn't sustain any significant damage and just need to be put upright. The pin on one headstone was more severely damaged and work will need to be done on that grave in the spring when the weather is better.
Although the city doesn't assume any liability for the damage, it is assisting families to get the headstones upright. If for whatever reason a family member can't be located, the city will repair the site as best as it can.
"Everyone is told, and it's in the bylaw, that you're responsible for vandalism or damage to your own site, so we are not responsible financially," Bjorn explained. "However if we can do anything possible to help out or attempt to fix it ourselves, we will do that."
Bjorn said the city will work with the relatives of the person whose headstone suffered some damage to decide on how they want to proceed with repairs.
Just when the vandalism occurred is unclear. There was no damage to the gate, so it's believed it took place when the cemetery was open to the public. Bjorn believes it could have occurred on Saturday evening after dusk, but before the gates closed at 8 p.m. Schreiber thinks it may have occurred on Sunday morning because the tire tracks looked fresh.
"The time of day it would have happened, I would think someone could have easily spotted that, but you never know," Bjorn said, adding the city does monitor the cemetery but doesn't have security on site at all times.
Schreiber is still scratching her head as to why someone would do such a thing.
"I don't know if it was people having fun - but what kind of fun? - or if it's people who have a real problem," she said.
Although she was upset her husband's marker was knocked over, Schreiber said it could have been worse if someone had decided to joy ride through a crowd of people.
"To see all the damage, I was thinking at least they are stones," she said. "Some people that are having problems, sometimes they drive over people."
A member of the public contacted police and RCMP are investigating the vandalism.
