Police and officials with the City of Edmonton are investigating after dozens of headstones at the Mount Pleasant cemetery were vandalized overnight.
CTV News has learned a City of Edmonton staff member arrived at work at the south side cemetery at 7 a.m. Tuesday, to find between 40 and 50 gravestones had been pushed to the ground.
“We’re just surprised and shocked,” Teena Changarathil, supervisor of cemetery sales and operations, said Tuesday.
The cost of damages has been pegged at $20,000, at least.
“It does seem like it’s been a planned attack, I don’t think it’s just one or two people, for the nature and the volume that was impacted and the way things were pushed over, I think there was probably more than just a few people,” Changarathil said.
Changarathil said this is the largest case of vandalism of this kind at the cemetery.
“I mean, there might be a few things here and there like a broken vase or kicked off monument,” Changarathil said – but said nothing of this scale.
“It’s not isolated to just one small area, it does encompass several parts of Mount Pleasant cemetery,” she said.
The City said a police report has been filed, and the city hopes video from surveillance cameras will help investigators. Officials are also considering adding more surveillance cameras to the grounds.
Meanwhile, crews are working on repairing the damaged headstones – officials said families will have to go through their insurance companies to repair stones with extensive damage.
With files from Shanelle Kaul
