HILLSIDE, Ill. (WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- The mother of a girl who died at the age of 11 is looking for answers, after her headstone was vandalized and removed, and the cemetery was of little help.
Shenita Williard was buried in Oakridge-Glen Oaks Cemetery in Hillside 23 years ago. Her mother, Edna Marie Brown, has often visited her gravesite.
“It’s real important,” Brown told CBS 2. “I come on her birthday, and then sometimes just come every now and then.”
She took CBS 2 to the cemetery weeks after she made the discovery that the headstone was gone.
“I came back out here in March, the beginning of March, and it was gone,” Brown said.
She looked across the rows and later found the headstone face down, far from her daughter's grave. Brown then noticed it had been vandalized.
“The headstone is very heavy, so someone had to move it,” Demetric Brown - Edna Marie’s sister and Shenita’s aunt - told CBS 2.
Brown said management at the cemetery had it put back in place, but they won't fix or replace the headstone.
“They set it back up there,” Edna Marie Brown said, “but it’s still messed up – especially the ‘1986’ (the year Shenita was born) is vandalized.
“...since we didn’t get the stone through Oak Ridge Cemetery, they weren’t responsible."
The company who made the headstone has offered to take care of it.
“I hope they will fix it for me,” Edna Marie Brown told CBS 2. “I really do.”
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