Dump truck, tools, equipment stolen from Calvary Cemetery

By Mary Ann Wyand

Burglars broke into the maintenance facility at Calvary Cemetery in Indianapolis twice on Jan. 29 and took a dump truck equipped with a hydraulic lift, tools and lawn care equipment valued at between $30,000 and $40,000.

John Wahl, associate director of management services for the archdiocese, said the thieves apparently drove a car through the locked gate of the cemetery’s chain-link fence along Bluff Road south of the main entrance at 435 W. Troy Ave. on Sunday afternoon, then crashed their car through a garage door.

Wahl said they left when they triggered the security alarm on the maintenance facility, but returned to Calvary Cemetery on Sunday night and were able to get inside the building.

The attempted break-in that afternoon was investigated by Marion County Sheriff’s Department deputies.

Cemetery staff members secured the gate and repaired the garage door, Wahl said, but the thieves were able to gain access to the building after dark before the disabled alarm system could be fixed on Jan. 30.

Wahl said sheriff’s deputies are investigating both break-ins and a report that two men were seen on the property.

“Sometime during the night on Sunday the thieves came back, but the alarm didn’t go off because it was still broken,” he said. “They took the dump truck, a tool box and several WeedEaters©.”

Mike English, site foreman for Calvary, St. Joseph and Holy Cross cemeteries in Indianapolis, said the thieves only targeted the maintenance building and no graves, headstones or mausoleum crypts were damaged during the break-ins.

The maintenance building is located at the base of a hill west of the cemetery office and gravesites about 500 feet away from Bluff Road.

English said the 2004 dump truck is white with a hydraulic lift and does not have the cemetery name painted on the doors.

He said employees of a wrecker service located nearby on Bluff Road “spotted a couple of men, two white males, on the [cemetery] property on Sunday.”

Repairs were made to the fence gate, garage door on the maintenance facility and alarm system on Monday, English said, and a report was filed with the archdiocese’s insurance company.

He asked anyone with information about the burglary to call the Marion County Sheriff’s Department. †