Someone stole flowers from a grave in Chattooga County, according to a recent report from the Chattooga County Sheriff’s Office.

A complainant told a responding deputy that someone stole a flower arrangement from her husband’s grave located at Johnson Cemetery at 781 Johnson Cemetery Road in Lyerly.  The arrangement was valued at $70 and the theft is believed to have happened sometime between December 12 and December 22, 2019.

According to Georgia law, people found guilty of stealing from a cemetery – be it headstones or cemetery arrangements – can face penalties of up to three years in prison. Georgia Code Section 16-8-2 states, “If the property which was the subject of the theft was a memorial to the dead or any ornamentation, flower, tree, or shrub placed on, adjacent to, or within any enclosure of a memorial to the dead, by imprisonment for not less than one nor more than three years.”