Mourner knocks over casket with vehicle in cemetery brawl, California police say

An uninvited mourner sparked a brawl at a Richmond cemetery that ended with a vehicle running over gravestones and knocking over a casket, California police reported.

Officers arriving at Rolling Hills Memorial Park on Saturday, Aug. 6, found the driver had also broken a water main that flooded the grave of the funeral director’s grandmother, a Richmond Police Department news release said.

They arrested the driver after he received medical care for being hit by a cane earlier in the altercation, police said.

The fight began about 1:30 p.m. when the 36-year-old man showed up uninvited to a family funeral at the cemetery, police told The Mercury News. One woman told police she brought a stun gun to the funeral in case of trouble.

After being hit by a cane in the fight, the man jumped in his vehicle and drove around the cemetery, knocking over tombstones and striking another mourner, the publication said.

Charges against the man, who was not named, include assault with a deadly weapon and vandalism of a tomb or memorial, the news release said.

Richmond is a city of 116,000 people north of Oakland across the bay from San Francisco and Marin County.

This story was originally published August 10, 2022 at 11:26 AM with the headline "Mourner knocks over casket with vehicle in cemetery brawl, California police say."