Authorities investigating Corona cemetery where people claim burial ground was sold
Sep 1, 2017On Friday, April 28, Riverside County District Attorney’s office spokesman John Hall confirmed that an investigation is underway at Corona Sunnyslope Cemetery. No arrests have been made or charges filed two days after DA investigators, Corona police and the coroner’s office were seen digging in the dirt at the cemetery’s lower-level, fenced-off potter’s field.“Please do not be alarmed at PD activity near Sunnyslope Cemetery,” Corona Police tweeted Wednesday, adding that they were assisting the Riverside County DA’s office with a search warrant.Land once part of the potter’s field was sold in the 1980s, nine decades after Sunnyslope opened in 1892 as a nonprofit graveyard.A 1994 investigation by the state and Riverside County Coroner’s Office failed to find proof of families’ claims that potter’s field land holding their relatives’ remains had been sold and built on, covered with massive storage units on one side and a nursery and apartments on the other.In October 2015, 11 people represented by attorney Scott Schutzman filed a class-action suit charging cemetery operators with selling land containing graves to the Islamic Society of Corona-Norco, which later buried at least 17 people there. Schutzman said then that more than 600 people were buried in the pauper’s graveyard.A photo taken Wednesday by Riverside County Historic Commissioner Don Williamson, who’s led historic tours at the cemetery for years, shows investigators working on land sold to the mosque.The District Attorney’s Real Estate Fraud Task Force is conducting an investigation, confirmed Hall, who wouldn’t answer questions about whether remains had been found in land that was sold.In October 2014, a Riverside County Grand Jury began investigating after cemetery operators used a tractor to grade the potter’s field before selling land that could hold 400 plots to the mosque.A single granite tombstone and two crosses lying in the dirt were all that remained of dozens of crosses and tombstones in a cemetery once m... (Press-Enterprise)
