Local

Man says his mother's grave, others damaged by cemetery workers

FLOYD COUNTY, Ga. — Families are angry about damage at a local cemetery that they said was caused by careless gravediggers.

The damage happened at the Floyd Memory Gardens in Rome.

David Kay, who visits his mother's grave often and freshens the flowers, said his latest visit was very upsetting.

“And when I came by here and seen the marks, it's, like, what abuse. Who would do this? And then it hit me. This is the people who are supposed to be taking care of her grave. They're actually the ones who tore it up,” Kay said.

Kay discovered last week that his mother’s marker and several other grave sites had been run over. He said it was done by workers using a tractor to dig a new grave, in which Sonia Vinson's father was just buried.

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“Very careless,” Vinson said. “I think we all should, when we lay our loved ones to rest at peace, we just want them taken care of."

Kay said it was an accident at best and disrespectful at worst. He said the cemetery either needs to get a smaller tractor that can be driven down the paths without damaging other plots or get some shovels and dig the graves by hand.

“I talked to management. They said they'd do repairs to her grave, but no true apology. I actually found this by driving by. Nobody called and told me it happened.  If I hadn't driven by and seen it, I guess it would have gone unnoticed,” Kay said.

The Vinson family just laid their father to rest and now they said they've learned they'll have to do it a second time.

Sonia Vinson said the family just learned he was buried in the wrong spot and will have to be reinterred.

“It's very upsetting,” Vinson said. “You think you've gotten closure, and you get a phone call saying that we're gonna have to go back through the whole process."

A cemetery spokesman said, “We sincerely apologize to the families involved and plan to fix any damage caused as soon as possible.”

They've launched an internal investigation.