Nine years ago, Amanda Reed gave birth to a stillborn child. She named her daughter Heaven Sent Reed before burying her in a Tunica County, Miss., graveyard. For nine years, Reed has visited the site where her daughter is buried; sometimes she cleans the site, and other times she brings flowers. Sometimes she does both.
On Tuesday, Reed went to visit her daughter’s grave at the Sutton Cove Graveyard, only to find her child’s remains missing.
“It feels like a dream. You know how you just wake up to a nightmare, and you never come out of it? That’s how I felt when I woke up,” Reed told WREG. “That’s not fair to me or the child. It's sad.”
Neighbors told WREG that Tunica County workers were digging inside the graveyard to address concerns about flooding, which was spilling into neighbors’ yards.
The only thing left where Reed’s daughter was once buried is a ditch, and Christopher Thompson, owner of the property and of Grant Funeral Home, told the news station that he didn’t give anyone from the county permission to dig on his site.
“They violate the cemetery—they violating me and the loved ones out there. They violating everyone,” Thompson said. “I didn’t authorize no one to dig up there.”
A diagram of burial plots viewed by the news station shows where Heaven Sent was buried, but it’s not clear whether work crews knew she was there, WREG reports.
Police are investigating the matter after several reports, but Reed said she merely hopes that there is a quick resolution to her nightmare.
“I’m waiting on answers. And I been waiting since this morning when I got the call,” Reed said.
Read more at WREG.