ST. ALBANS — Police are investigating vandalism in which about $2,000 worth of damage was done at the Maloon Cemetery on Grant Road, where headstones were knocked over and broken last week.

The town recently paid $2,500 for repairs to the cemetery and now faces additional costs that will set them back financially for the next year, said Town Manager Rhonda Stark.

Many of the gravestones vandalized are the same ones that were recently repaired.

“It’s just too bad that people don’t have something better to do with their lives,” said Stark. “Like every town in Maine, we are scraping for every dollar to get by. Now we have to pay to repair a cemetery that we just repaired.”

The town sexton noticed that the headstones had been damaged on Wednesday, and the town reported the damage to the Somerset County Sheriff’s Department, said Stark. The graves were in an older part of the cemetery, Starks said.

In 2013, the town paid about $2,500 to repair gravestones in the same cemetery that were damaged in a separate incident of vandalism and others that were in need of refurbishing. Almost all of the stones that were repaired were knocked down.

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“It would be good if anyone that sees activity in the area or at other cemeteries would report it to the sheriff’s department,” said Stark.

The Somerset County Sheriff’s Department asks that anyone with information is asked to contact Corporal Gene Cole at the Somerset County Sheriff’s Department at 474-9591, call the anonymous tip line at 474-0230 or email the sheriff’s department at sherifftips@somersetcounty-me.org.

Rachel Ohm — 612-2368

rohm@centralmaine.com

Twitter: @rachel_ohm


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