Vandals strike at Lynn Cemetery

LYNN - Residents and law enforcement are working together to patrol roads at Lynn Community Cemetery, after extensive vandalism resulted in gravestones being overturned, vases pulled from  other stones and decorations and flowers strewn.

Bobbie Barton, a Lynn resident for over 50 years, frequently visits the cemetery where her husband and other loved ones are buried.  However, during a recent visit to the cemetery, which is located off of Long Street, she discovered vandalism and desecrated graves, which to her was heartbreaking.

“I go to the cemetery once a day, sometimes twice,” Barton said. When visiting the cemetery  Monday, Oct. 19, she discovered that fall arrangements and decorations on a family plot had been strewn.  The items were found a distance away in the cemetery. A pole containing some fall decorations near the grave had been bent toward the ground, she said.

“I thought, ‘I didn’t think we had wind last night,’” Barton said, adding she went to Lynn Town Hall to notify Police Chief Bryan Kirkpatrick, who accompanied her back to the cemetery.

As Barton and Kirkpatrick were inspecting the cemetery, they noticed that three  tombstones had been overturned, at least two more moved from their foundations, vases forcibly removed from another stone and flowers removed from vases that had been left intact on some stones, they said.