KEY POINTS:
Thieves have stolen toys from the graves of children.
Shelley Crozier is shocked a pink fairy castle was stolen from her daughter Jade's grave at Palmerston North's Kelvin Grove Cemetery. It was the toy the 6-year-old picked herself a month before she died of a brain tumour.
"We have already been through enough. We have lost our children, and now we have lost their shrine," Ms Crozier told the Manawatu Standard.
Emma Allardice died of leukaemia when she was 3 years old. Now her teddy bear, her lambs, her glow-in-the-dark rabbit, a Barbie doll's house and a Zoe lunch box she took everywhere are among items pilfered from her grave.
Emma's mother, Kaye Allardice-Green, said she expected small items would go missing occasionally, but more than 50 items had been stripped from the children's cemetery during the past week.
"To basically strip a child's grave of items, some of quite substantial size, is totally vile and unacceptable," Ms Allardice-Green said.
"The people who have stolen from Emma's, other children's and no doubt adults' graves are nothing but cowards."
- NZPA
