Christmas tree on 8-year-old’s grave stolen

GREENVILLE, S.C. — A Christmas tree placed at the grave of an 8-year-old Greenville County boy is gone. And the young girl who placed it there to remember her best friend is devastated.

Christian Jose Lopez was hit by a car on Nov. 25, dying two days later at the hospital. When he was laid to rest on Sunday, his friends and family hoped the tree would make him happy. But by Monday afternoon, the tree had been stolen. It happened at the Conestee Community Cemetery on Second Street.

Victory Chapel Baptist Church was the church Christian attended and where he was walking home from the night he was hit by the car. Friends said the church paid for his burial, and now the community wants to find the Grinch who stole the Christmas tree.

Brooklyn Fowler and her mom, Andrea, said they heard Christian talking about how excited he was to decorate his own tree.

Sunday night, just hours after he was buried, the Fowlers put the tree on their little friend’s fresh grave, decorated with snowflake lights and multicolored ornaments.

When Christian’s grandmother went to see it Monday, it was gone.

“That makes me feel kind of angry and sad, [that] somebody would do that,” Brooklyn Fowler said.

“It’s a child, you know. They stole from a child’s grave. You know that’s, that’s just heart-wrenching,” Andrea Fowler said.

They’re not sure if it was taken Sunday night or Monday morning.

“Maybe [whoever took the tree] should — are — thinking to give it back,” Brooklyn said. “Because I’m sure they knew that it was a little boy and I’m sure that they knew that he loved, that he probably loved Christmas.”

Brooklyn said she imagines Christian in heaven, decorating his own big Christmas tree as she misses him. Friends in the community plan to put up a memorial where the wreck happened and they said there are security cameras there to catch any mischief.