Council gardeners have been accused of indiscriminately dumping graveside mementoes.

The family of a dead 17-year-old have accused the workmen of ripping out memorial plants and a commemorative hockey stick from his grave and dumping them.

The grim discovery was made just days before the sixth anniversary of Andy Gard's sudden death on July 27, 1997, by his grandparents, who help tend the grave at Kirby Cemetery.

Andy's distraught mother, Caroline of Glebe Way, Frinton, said: "It is so very insensitive and uneccessary."

And she claims that when she approached council gardeners to see if they knew what had happened to the plants and six-inch long wooden replica hockey stick presented as a tribute by his hockey friends, they refused to help.

Luckily, however, after hours of searching they found them, along with various pots, also thought to have been stripped off graves and dumped, in the cutting pile.

Now Mrs Gard and her vet husband, Peter, have complained to the Chief Executive of Tendring Council, John Hawkins.

A spokesman for Tendring Council said: "Kirby Cemetery is the responsibility of TDC Leisure Services which has not yet received Mr Gard's complaint but, be assured, all the points it raises will be fully investigated as quickly as possible."

Since Andy's death from a heart attack, the family backed by the community has raised £90,000 to support (CRY) Cardiac Risk in the Young.

Published Friday, August 1, 2003

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