Detectives from the Contra Costa County Office of the Sheriff are investigating a grand theft that occurred at the Oakmont Memorial Park at 2099 Reliez Valley Road in unincorporated Lafayette.
Oakmont reported to the Sheriff’s Office that an estimated 200 bronze vases that were attached to gravesites were missing. Oakmont staff noticed the vases were missing, but it was not known exactly when they were stolen. A memorial bench was also vandalized.
The images are examples of the missing vases.
The investigation is ongoing. Anyone with any information on this incident is asked to contact the Sheriff’s Office Investigation Division at (925) 313-2600. For any tips, email: tips@so.cccounty.us or call (866) 846-3592 to leave an anonymous voice message.
camp out at the recyclers, the tweakers will be there soon.
My 1952 Chevy Bel Air went for 255,000 miles before it finally died in 1970.
Unfortunately, this isn’t the first theft from a local cemetery, this time it’s brass vases, previous thefts were of brass headstone plaques and brass urns. This normalization of the vandalism of graves and theft from graves and cemeteries is truly disgusting. Hopefully, they’ll be found before a recycling center sells them off as scrap metal to be melted down, but given that cemetery employees didn’t seem to notice when the vases first went missing, the chances of recovering these stolen brass vases appears to be unlikely. Hopefully, the thieves will be identified, arrested, prosecuted, found guilty, and given a prison sentence.