GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Thursday night several graves were vandalized at two separate Grand Rapids cemeteries.
"Anytime you have a situation like this in cemeteries, and when you're memorializing something, if something were to or someone, I mean, something happens like this. It re, you know, it re opens those wounds again," said Joe Sulak, Grand Rapids Park Superintendent. "And so we, you know, we feel for the families. We feel for the individuals that are memorialized, and we're going to do everything we can to make sure we can restore it."
While the suspect of the vandalism is still at large, one Grand Rapids man was able to capture him on video.
Craig O'Neill is a marathoner. Thursday night when he was going for a run through Woodlawn Cemetery he saw the vandal and went around for a second lap to see what was going on.
"That's when I came around the corner and saw the guy literally raise something over his head and smashed down his big poof of sand that came out," said O'Neill.
O'Neill pulled out his phone to record the vandal as he destroyed various monuments and memorials around the cemetery. He said he followed the man, continuing to record, until the man made a threat.
In the video, you can hear O'Neill call out "Hey!" and the vandal simply replies, "You wanna die?"
O'Neill said his wife wasn't happy about his decision to follow the vandal, but he explained he did it for his neighborhood cemetery.
"You begin to develop a sense of responsibility," he said. "This is so hurtful, I think, because when you know they're coming here to this space, and this is what's happened to it, what an unfortunate thing for those grieving families."
Sulak said that there was a police report filed, however by the time police arrived the vandal had fled.
Now, the cemetery is left to pick up the pieces and restore the monuments.
"As anyone would know, that either bought a headstone or a monument, you know, it is a sizable investment for the memorial of family members, and some of those materials are more expensive than others," said Sulak.
"We'll work with the local monument companies on evaluating how those that goes and even to the point of will probably be reaching out to some families, because ultimately, this is property of the families that they put in the cemetery to memorialize. So a combination of that, we'll be working on restoring to what was here prior to the damage."
And O'Neill, mortified by the destruction someone could cause in his community, had one last thing to say.
"My message towards anyone that wants to come to these neighborhoods, though, and disturb the peace, knock it off. We have enough going on in the world. We love our little piece of this neighborhood and want to keep it nice," he said.