COCOA, Fla. – There’s new fallout after a historic cemetery was vandalized this month.
On Jan. 5, Cocoa police said someone spray-painted red graffiti on a gravestone and the walls of Cocoa’s Hilltop Cemetery.
Now, the city is cleaning up the mess, and there’s at least one council member who thinks cameras should be put in the cemetery.
The city’s communications director said workers tried painting over the graffiti Tuesday afternoon, but the rain washed the paint off the gravestone.
“Unfortunately, with the weather, some of that paint came off,” Samantha Senger said. “So we’ll redo it on Friday when the rain stops.”
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Between the weather and trying to locate a family to a gravestone that could be more than 100 years old, Senger said fixing the situation has taken longer than the city would have liked.
”We tried to get it taken care of as quickly as possible,” she said. “We knew the sensitivity around it, and so we wanted to make sure we did it right, and so we wanted to make sure we reached out to the family. We could not find any family,” Senger explained.
On Wednesday, councilman Alex Goins wrote on Facebook that cameras will now be added to the cemetery.
Senger clarified that cameras are part of a discussion, at this point.
“There’s a lot of different things that we have talked about to offer a little bit more security in the area,” she said. “Our police department does regular rounds in the area just to make sure that we keep the area safe.”
Senger said any discussion about cameras or any other security measures will have to be approved by the council.
There’s nothing scheduled for a meeting at this time.
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