Cruel Robbers Take Items From Cemetery

[ChibiHorsewoman]

[color=darkviolet]

[b][quote=13wham.com]Cruel Robbers Take Items From Cemetery




Patrice Walsh (Greece, NY) 08/15/05 -- Over the past few days, they someone has stolen the toys and other mementos grieving parents brought to place by their children's graves at Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Greece.

Little Alexandra Biek died the day she was born. Her parents, Angelica and David Biek remembered what would have been their daughter's first birthday with special gifts--pinwheels, statues, stuffed animals. However, the gifts were taken from a penned area in the cemetery, where they are kept while the gravesites can be mowed. To the Bieks, these items are priceless and they just want them back.

Michael Ramos died a year ago. Someone also stole the bronze medal that Michael's father got when he climbed Mount Marcy and his grandparents are heartbroken.

Al Ramos, Michael's grandfather, said, "We had a lot of decorative things in there that meant a lot of things to us, but it's disheartening."

The Bieks are expecting their second child--a boy--in a few weeks. They hope that, by then, the stolen items will be returned. The Bieks reported the theft to the cemetery, but officials said the area where the toys were taken has to be left open to give access to other families.

They believe vandals may have taken the items not realizing how sentimental these things are. The parents are asking that whoever took their children's stuffed toys and other items return them. No questions asked.[/b][/quote]

I heard this piece on my local news when I got home from work tonight. I find it shocking, disgusting and just down right nasty. I mean, it's bad enough to steal from graves in the first place, but to steal from a children's grave or a baby's grave is just deplorable. I hope they find who did this and punish them.

And if you really want to you can see the video of the news report by clicking here [URL=http://]http://13wham.com/mediacenter/?videoId=159958[/URL] , just click on the news story- if it hasn't been changed yet.

So let me know what you think.[/color]

[Lafleur]

[COLOR=DarkRed]Vandels are vandels. You can't expect to put somthing on a grave and find it there the next morning; it's the sad truth about my Generation, shiftless lot we are. I think that this, although a bit of a reminder of how much my generation sucks, is not really a tragedy; it's a fact of life, like Hockey Riots are a fact of life where I live. I'd rather see news reporting about the two Torontonians who were caught smuggling guns across the Boarder, and than that lead them to a gun-smuggling ring that was responsible for 14 shootings in the Toronto Area; now that is a tragedy. This is just depressing.[/COLOR]

[Pumpkin]

[quote name='Ilium][COLOR=DarkRed']Vandels are vandels. You can't expect to put somthing on a grave and find it there the next morning; it's the sad truth about my Generation, shiftless lot we are. I think that this, although a bit of a reminder of how much my generation sucks, is not really a tragedy; it's a fact of life, like Hockey Riots are a fact of life where I live. I'd rather see news reporting about the two Torontonians who were caught smuggling guns across the Boarder, and than that lead them to a gun-smuggling ring that was responsible for 14 shootings in the Toronto Area; now that is a tragedy. This is just depressing.[/COLOR][/quote][SIZE=1]Just because something isn't a big tragedy doesn't mean it isn't important to somebody. Vandalism is common nowadays but that doesn't make it right and it doesn't make it right that those parents have to worry about someone stealing something off their child's grave.

I would think these kind of things happen often in a cemetery, shouldn't they have a security system or something? I've heard of people taking flowers off the grave (which it's a pretty messed up thing to do) but taking a child's toy is pretty low. But still, if something is that valuable, I don't think a grave would be the safest place for it. They should have made a place for it at home or somewhere where the public can't get their hands on it. Some people are just twisted and would simply take something that doesn't belong to them for fun.
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[SunfallE]

It's kind of hard to have security for a graveyard unless you plan on making everyone who enters show ID. It's really quite sad that people steal from graves.

My brother died quite a while ago and from time to time the flowers and wreaths we put there are stolen. I remember that one time my dad got a nice evergreen christmas one and had it put on a stand. It was nicely made and the evergreen ones last for a good month. It cost about 60 dollars for the wreath and yet in less than 24 hours someone stole it.

I'm sure it was quite pretty on the door of the person's home, and I'm equally sure that none of their neighbors knew that they stole it from my family. We still leave things, but sadly, we no longer spend as much as it's disgusting that others are too cheap to go and buy their own wreath or flowers.

[Zeekan]

[size=1]I've always had this notion that people who rob things from graves will be haunted by them. I mean, who isn't going to think about the dead guy they just robbed that beautiful wreath from whenever they look at it? [/size]

[Sandy]

I don't think it qute works that way, Zeekan.

See, some people just lack the common sense of guilt and conscience. I think most of them don't even keep the things they steal from the graveyard, but sell it forward on the street market.

To some people, matter is just matter, with a mental price-tag attached but no emotional value. Sad, really. :/

[Lafleur]

[QUOTE=Pumpkin][SIZE=1]Just because something isn't a big tragedy doesn't mean it isn't important to somebody. Vandalism is common nowadays but that doesn't make it right and it doesn't make it right that those parents have to worry about someone stealing something off their child's grave.
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[COLOR=DarkRed]
Yes, I know. But this is just depressing; it's not really important news. I'd rather hear about all the Aide workers being kidnapped in Iraq than about some stuffed animals being stolen.[/COLOR]

[Sara]

[quote name='Ilium][COLOR=DarkRed']I'd rather hear about all the Aide workers being kidnapped in Iraq than about some stuffed animals being stolen.[/COLOR][/quote][color=#6699cc]No one's stopping you.

There was an article similar to this in the Milwaukee paper a bit back. People were removing things from shrines (e.g., crash sites, etc.) It's really a heartbreaking lack of respect for people and their feelings.[/color]

[Soliel]

[COLOR=GREEN]I actually have sort of a personal experiance with this. A good friend of my brother's passed away back in March. A few weeks after the funneral, the grave was vanalized when someone(s) came and smashed some of the vases of flowers and stold some little trinkets left at the grave site, including a small Nurf football my mom left (he played football). Now his parents have to resort to either perminantly securing things like statues and vases with concrete, or taking smaller trinkets home with them. It's all really quite sad.[/COLOR]

[Gavin]

[SIZE=1]This really is just sickening, to steal toys from a child's grave is the lowest of the low, it really is hard to imagine someone could be so depraved as to do something like this. While I don't support capital punishment, I think corporal punishment would be justified in this case, catch the excuses-for-human-beings who did this and give them twenty lashes each. I might seem a bit extreme I know but acts like this shouldn't be tolerated or those involved shown any mercy. [/SIZE]

[Retribution]

[quote name='Gavin][SIZE=1']While I don't support capital punishment, I think corporal punishment would be justified in this case, catch the excuses-for-human-beings who did this and give them twenty lashes each. I might seem a bit extreme I know but acts like this shouldn't be tolerated or those involved shown any mercy. [/SIZE][/quote]
[SIZE=1]Whatever happened to jail-time? I'd say twenty lashes is getting off easy. Perhaps twenty lashes in addition to several years jail-time.

Personally, I'd rather get my punishment over in a span of a day rather than drag it out and waste several years of my life.[/SIZE]

[Maully]

[COLOR=SeaGreen]It's a very depressing spot of news, that's for sure... Sadly though it is a very common occurrance. So common, in fact, that I am surprised it made the news.

While level-headed people like most of us find this deplorable, thieves see it as an easy mark. and who is going to notice it's gone? Heartbroken family members. In the mindset of a thief, I could understand snatching a medal or something that looked of value, but why steal pinwheels or flowers? these things are often cheap and of no more than the sentimental value.

What I find worse than this are the people who actually damage the graves. While I was in high school, there was a group of kids who went to a cemetary and took sledge hammers to tombstones and stuff like that. They were caught and punished, but what drives someone to do that?[/COLOR]

[ChibiHorsewoman]

[QUOTE=Ilium][COLOR=DarkRed]
Yes, I know. But this is just depressing; it's not really important news. I'd rather hear about all the Aide workers being kidnapped in Iraq than about some stuffed animals being stolen.[/COLOR][/QUOTE]

[color=darkviolet]Then make one you loud mouthed Canuck.

Nobody is forcing you to read this thread you can just turn around and walk away from your keyboard instead of posting- nobody is holding a gun to your head. Obviously you must care somewhat.

YOu want a thread of a certain subject, you make one up, that's what I've been doing for almost 2 years! :angry:

I'm just royally cheesed that someone has a complete lack of morales to rob the grave of a child. I know that the items are basically just sentimental vaule and have no monetary vaule- but for the love of all things sacred don't go stealing from the dead.[/color]

[Sandy]

[quote name='ChibiHorsewoman][color=darkviolet']I know that the items are basically just sentimental vaule and have no monetary vaule- but for the love of all things sacred don't go stealing from the dead.[/color][/quote]


Because today's nations are rapidly pushing apart from the church, many people don't believe that dead people are something to respect. They just see them as corpses, shells of what they used to be. Thus they think "stealing" from the graves is impossible, for how can a corpse own anything. Those thieves just took what was left lying unguarded.

I'm not saying that they didn't do anything wrong, I'm just trying to understand what those people were thinking.

I don't believe in "worshipping the corpses" either, meaning visiting graveyards and bringing flowers to the grave. I'm not judging it either, I bet people get much consolense out of it.

But to my reasoning people who are dead are gone, completely. So to me, spending money on flowers and stuff to bring to the grave would be that much money wasted.

Again, I'm not saying I agree with the thieves, I'm trying to make a point that what they did wasn't that "unbelievable" or "horrendous" as some might think.

[Red]

[quote name='Sage']Because today's nations are rapidly pushing apart from the church, many people don't believe that dead people are something to respect. They just see them as corpses, shells of what they used to be. Thus they think "stealing" from the graves is impossible, for how can a corpse own anything. Those thieves just took what was left lying unguarded.[/quote]

I doubt that the Church is required to have any sort of respect for the dead, more plain ol' freedom of choice. What they think is entirely up to them - until somebody finds out the reasons behind it assumptions won't do much, eh?

No offence intended but in this day & age this kind of thing is bound to happen. It's not uncommon, it's thousands of years away from being a new occurence, it's just human nature. For some people, freely available item = theft. Big old block of stone in the ground = graffiti spot, and so on until we're all blue in the face shouting atrocity & outrage.

It won't change, there are just too many people on the planet.

[ForgottenRaider]

[QUOTE=Red]No offence intended but in this day & age this kind of thing is bound to happen. It's not uncommon, it's thousands of years away from being a new occurence, it's just human nature. For some people, freely available item = theft. Big old block of stone in the ground = graffiti spot, and so on until we're all blue in the face shouting atrocity & outrage.

It won't change, there are just too many people on the planet.[/QUOTE]
This day and age? Heh, I'm just impressed how civil people have been about this sort of thing for the last four hundred years or so. My limited knowledge in this area suggests that death has been treated far more seriously recently and stealing, damaging, and attacking graves is no where near as bad as it was before this time. So isolated cases of the work of some stoner's or drunks can easily go by without a problem. Painful for the people involved but still only some thing short term - they will fix what was broken and hopefully get on with their lives rather quickly.

..Or in short, I agree with Red.

[Retribution]

[quote name='Red']I doubt that the Church is required to have any sort of respect for the dead, more plain ol' freedom of choice. What they think is entirely up to them - until somebody finds out the reasons behind it assumptions won't do much, eh?[/quote]
[SIZE=1]Agreed. I always thought that respect for the dead was a human instinct, and it was something that was given, whether your atheistic or religious.[/SIZE]

[MomochiZabuza]

[SIZE=1]Maybe some runaway kid took them? If I was 8 years old and saw a bunch of toys I would proabably take them too...

I don't know if there are that many runaway kids in New York but I know over in boston there are a bunch... At least when I visited there were. And they were all either 9 or 10 and would probably go back home in a few hours.

I ran away once. I went back to go get my bike. And decided to stay. It wasn't very well planned, I was 8. :/[/SIZE]

[Red]

[quote name='ForgottenRaider']This day and age? Heh, I'm just impressed how civil people have been about this sort of thing for the last four hundred years or so.[/quote]

It's been going on for thousands of years, gauging general opinion and attitude towards it is impossible. I'm sure reaction changes from person to person, irrespective of in what time frame it happened.

[quote]My limited knowledge in this area suggests that death has been treated far more seriously recently and stealing, damaging, and attacking graves is no where near as bad as it was before this time.[/quote]

Treated more seriously - what do you mean by that? If someone really wants to steal from a grave, they will. How serious it's taken these days won't really fall into the equation, and how serious a person takes it is all down to their views on death.

[quote]So isolated cases of the work of some stoner's or drunks can easily go by without a problem.[/quote]

Because people who aren't drunk or stoned never commit crimes? This is the kind of generalisation that gets people nowhere.