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Car crashes into cemetery that sits in city roundabout

News

June 15th, 2017 by Ric Hanson

WEST DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) – Authorities have been searching for the driver of a car that crashed into a family burial site that sits in the middle of a West Des Moines roundabout. The Des Moines Register reports police were dispatched to Huston Cemetery around 3:30 a.m. Saturday. The driver had abandoned the car, which had damaged the fence, landscaping and some headstones before coming to rest.

Huston Cemetery is named for James B. Huston, patriarch of one of the first families to settle in Dallas County. The city website says the first two people buried there were former slave girls with the last name of Harper who “died on their way to freedom.”

The once rural site has been overtaken by West Des Moines’ expansion. The city now owns the parcel.