PUNTA GORDA, Fla.–A 31-year-old St. Petersburg man was arrested on July 24 after the Pinellas County Sheriff’s office said he stole 125 bronze vases from a cemetery and sold them as scrap for “quick cash” to buy fentanyl.
According to arrest records, Douglas Deck, Jr. removed more than 125 vases from various burial plots at a St. Petersburg cemetery in mid-July. The vases were attached to concrete headstones at the gravesites and are intended to hold flowers or other ornamental and sometimes sentimental decorations.
Detectives were “tipped off” on July 21 by a local scrap metal yard and determined Deck’s identity for selling the vases for cash on four separate occasions, the arrest report says. The total weight of the stolen vases was 661 pounds of bronze for which Deck received $1,149 during four separate visits to the scrap yard, the report says. Detectives said they were able to recover 124 of the stolen vases, however, the damages were estimated to be approximately $150,000….