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After multiple thefts at her son Isaiah's gravesite in Orange, this mum is demanding change

June 23, 2022


Isaiah's gravesite on Wednesday June 22, 2022. Supplied.

By Peter Holmes


A mother of four from Orange has been forced to glue vases to concrete and bury shared gifts in the ground at her son’s gravesite at Orange cemetery after repeated thefts.


Tammi Fisher is pleading with authorities to do something about the recurring thefts after she visited the grave yesterday of her fourth child, Isaiah Zane Fisher.



Isaiah was stillborn on June 22, 2020, and yesterday marked the two-year anniversary.


“This has been a recurring problem for the last two years,” Fisher told The Orange News Examiner.

After receiving advice from a funeral home she used plumbers’ glue to affix the vases to concrete, but that hasn’t stopped people stealing them.



“I went there yesterday and had to lay the flowers down as there were no vases. Don’t ask me how they did it, but they somehow got them off.


“It’s quite heartbreaking when things have been destroyed or taken.”


Other items have been removed over the past two years, including angel figure ornaments and Disney Bambi toys.


Fisher visits Isaiah’s gravesite monthly, and at Easter and Christmas and on Isaiah’s birthday she redecorates the site.


She has bought matching charms for her and Isaiah, but said she has to “dig ground up and bury them so they don’t get stolen”.

She is baffled as to why someone would wilfully be so disrespectful.


“It’s not as if they can sell these items. And if you’re really that desperate go to the Reject Shop or the charity shops.”



Asked what she would say to the people who have stolen her items, Fisher said: “Think about visiting their loved ones after they've gone, and how they would feel if the site was damaged, or things had been taken.”


After contacting Orange police to ask for help, Fisher says she was invited to come to the station and make a formal request for patrols at the cemetery. She plans to do that in coming days.

Fisher is a member of a social media group for bereaved parents, and says reports of theft at gravesites is common. She is asking that consideration be given to installing CCTV at Orange cemetery.



According to Orange City Council the cemetery is open daily from 7:30am and the gates are closed at sunset.



 


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