Reward Offered To Catch Watertown Cemetery Vandals
WATERTOWN (CBS) - Two Waltham businesses are offering a $2,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of vandals who desecrated Saint Patrick's Cemetery.
Brasco & Son Memorial Funeral Home and Joyce Funeral Home are offering the reward a week after police began investigating the vandalism at the cemetery at 925 Belmont St.
Seven headstones were overturned and a beautiful statue memorial was destroyed. The statue lay broken and in pieces on the ground.
Watertown Police Lt. James O'Connor said police are looking for any information that may lead to the vandals.
"It's very serious. It's disturbing behavior. It's in the middle of a neighborhood. It's a cemetery," O'Connor said.
UPDATE: $2,000 (total) reward being offered by local Funeral Homes for information leading to the identity of the suspect(s) responsible for damage to St. Pats Cemetery. See our FB: https://t.co/owK3wbebAJ https://t.co/mrRoAXQOBX
— Watertown Police (@WatertownPD) November 14, 2017
Several detectives are working the case. For many of them, the desecration of the cemetery is personal, because their loved ones are buried in Saint Patrick's Cemetery.
"A lot of people here who work in the town, they have relatives here so it definitely hits home," said Detective David MacNeil, whose grandparents are among those who are laid to rest in the cemetery.
Jose Suares was among local residents who went to Saint Patrick's Cemetery on Wednesday, after hearing that vandals had toppled several headstones there.
"It's just beyond words (that) anyone that would do something like this," said Suares, who visited the cemetery to check on headstones.
Anyone with information is asked to call Watertown police at 617-972-6500.