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( 4UMF NEWS ) Woman Busted Stealing Flowers From Graves: Police say a woman has been charged with stealing flower arrangements from cemeteries and reselling them for profit. Carroll County Sheriff investigators arrested Eleanor Ashley, 55, and charged her with six counts of theft by taking. "Putting flowers on a loved one's grave after they've passed and then actually going back and finding out that they're missing, it infuriates people," said Carroll County Chief Deputy Brad Robinson. Judy Simonton was replacing flowers that were missing from her father's grave in Carrollton City Cemetery on Tuesday. She didn't think much of it until she learned that Ashley had been arrested. "You come to a cemetery and leave flowers for people you loved and how anybody can be so heartless to just go and take something that you've left, I just don't understand how anybody could do that," she said. Carroll County Sheriff investigators received numerous complaints from people who had placed flowers on graves, only to have them disappear. That led them to Ashley's home. "She was actually selling them (flowers) from her yard and it kind of became known that she was one in the neighborhood that you could purchase flowers from," Robinson said. He said they were buying them for their families graves. Robinson said the people who bought flowers from Ashley had no idea they were stolen. "We put her under surveillance and on one particular day following her, she visited six cemeteries and actually took flowers from two of those," Robinson said. "At that point we went ahead and made the arrest." Robinson said they have received at least 75 complaints from people who lost flowers from grave sites and the complaints keep coming in daily. Source

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