More than 200 headstones were spray-painted with swastikas at a Illinois cemetery overnight Saturday.
The cemetery is the resting place for more than 1,300 veterans and is planning to host a Memorial Day event on Monday, a local CBS affiliate reported.
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Staff at the Sunset Hills Cemetery in Glen Carbon are working to clean up the vandalism before the event.
“We haven’t seen anything of this magnitude in the 30 years that I’ve been here,” said Mark Johnson, the grounds superintendent of the cemetery. “It’s all hands on deck to try to get this thing cleaned up by Monday.”
The cemetery owner plans to install security cameras in the cemetery.
Police also responded to a nearby neighborhood after residents reported the same spray paint on homes and at least one vehicle.
The Edwardsville Police Department posted video to Facebook that showed security footage of a possible suspect.
Antisemitic incidents surged 57 percent in 2017, the Anti-Defamation League has said, the largest increase since the group started collecting data in 1979.
