HOLLY SPRINGS, Miss. (AP) — A Mississippi family is mourning again after they say a storm toppled a tree, unearthing their grandfather’s grave and turning his casket upside-down.

Tracey Lane said she recently found the casket of her grandfather, David Ira Lane Sr., lifted from the ground and the headstone in the air at a cemetery in Holly Springs. The station’s video shows relatives reaching up to the broken casket in a tangle of roots from the overturned tree. The family believes it’s been that way for two weeks.

“That’s a whole casket. I don’t know if we have a head in here,” Lane said. “I don’t know what I can see in here, but it’s not fair.”
Lane says the thought of having to re-bury her grandfather is agonizing.

“We didn’t bring him here in dirt,” Lane said. “We brought him here in a casket. We want his pieces back together.” The station reports her grandfather was buried 50 years ago.

Ben Cole, a deacon trustee of Hopewell Church No. 1, arrived as a news crew was interviewing relatives and began cutting up the fallen tree. Cole says cemetery caretakers were working to try and find the best way to fix the damage.

“I know he’s no longer living, among the living,” said another granddaughter, Diane Smith. “He’s not living. However, this is unacceptable to the dead. They should’ve done something by now.”