On January 3, around 60 headstones of the St. Vincent De Paul Cemetery in Mitchell, Ontario were knocked over and damaged as reported by Global News. The incident occurred around 9:45 A.M. The police had responded to the call of mischief from the cemetery itself.
Later on it had been reported by The Beacon Herald that 7 teenagers had been charged with mischief resulting in around 5,000$ of damages done to the headstones of the St. Vincent De Paul Cemetery. The teens range from the ages of 13 to 17 years old, and come from varying places: Huron East, West Perth, and Stratford. They were all scheduled to appear before the Ontario court of justice at a later set date.
The Cemetery community, made up of volunteers cleaned up the cemetery, and two sets of crews, one from Kitchener and one from Stratford worked on doing the heavy lifting of putting back the knocked over headstones. The Cemetery Board Chair Mr. John Gaffney and the secretary-treasure of the Cemetery, Mr. Dennis O’Reilly both stated that they are overwhelmed by the community’s support and efforts to clean up and set to rights the damages committed by the teens. The Perth County OPP also thanked the community for the help of the public’s assistance in the investigation.