Memorial to little girl stolen from Macon schoolyard
By Associated Press
For the AJC
1:12 p.m. Friday, October 16, 2009
MACON -- Students are calling scrap yards in search of a $1,400 bronze memorial statue dedicated to a little girl that was swiped from the schoolyard where she and her friends once played.
The 3-foot-tall memorial at Alexander II Magnet School that honored Tori Heard was likely yanked off its base last week. Heard was a second-grader who died at age 7 in an October 2006 car crash.
Schoolchildren raised money to buy the statue, which featured a ponytailed girl in a green dress. Now all that remains is a sandaled right foot atop a stone mount that was snapped off at the ankle.
Elizabeth O'Dell, who was in Tori's class the year she died, says she's been telling scrap yard owners: "Don't buy a statute that has one foot missing."
Kellie White, another former classmate of Tori, told the Macon Telegraph, "It makes me angry and sad at the same time. We did all that fundraising in memory of her, and then somebody comes and takes it. We loved Tori and we wanted to have something as a memory."
The theft comes just before the third anniversary of Tori's death.
"It would bad anytime, but the timing couldn't be worse," Tori's mother, Kellie White, told the newspaper. "We'd just like to have it back."
