MIAMI – Authorities are investigating reports of vandals striking at Miami-Dade County’s oldest cemetery.
City of Miami police officers were seen at the Miami City Cemetery, located at 1800 NE Second Ave., on Sunday afternoon.
Officers were called to the cemetery just after 2 p.m. following reports of someone vandalizing one gravesite.
Photos sent to Local 10 News showed what appeared to be a grave that had been dug up with the crypt opened.
“When you do something like this, it’s totally crossing the line,” cemetery volunteer Ronnie Hurwitz told Local 10 News reporter Terrell Forney.
“What did you see?” Forney asked.
“A piece of wood covering a grave, a crypt that was broken into, and I knew immediately they went after the bones and stuff,” Hurwitz said.
Detectives with the Miami Police Department are now trying to figure out whether this was part of a religious ritual, a sinister prank or something else.
Hurwitz, who volunteers with the cemetery’s restoration committee, has his own suspicions.
“We have a lot of Santeria practicing here, but I’ve never seen anything like this before, ever in 30 plus years -- I was shocked,” he said.
The graveyard on the edge of Wynwood is the oldest cemetery in Miami-Dade County and some of the most prominent pioneers of the city are buried there, like Julia Tuttle -- nicknamed the “Mother of Miami,” and the Rev. Theodore Gibson, a civil rights activist who made strides in Coconut Grove and beyond.
The cemetery holds the remains of hundreds of names that tie South Florida to many of its original founders.
“The cemetery is all family plots,” Hurwitz said. “It’s run by the City of Miami Parks Department, but they actually had to have the crime scene come out and do a report because it’s not city property -- it’s individual property.”
According to a source close to the investigation, the grave has been restored and no bones appear to have been taken from the coffin.
The source said it’s unclear to whom the grave belongs, although the vandalism took place in the “Black section” of the cemetery.
The source said the cemetery had similar problems years ago when grave robbers stole jewelry from the graves of people buried in the wealthy “white section” of the cemetery.
Anyone with information is urged to call Miami-Dade Crime Stoppers at 305-471-TIPS.