Losing a child is every parent’s worst nightmare, and if anyone knows this, it’s Jacob and Tashana Armstrong. As if the loss wasn’t bad enough, someone seemed to be taunting them, only they didn’t realize it until the couple visited their son’s grave at the cemetery. Jacob and Tashana Armstrong imagined they’d get to see their son grow up into the incredible man he was destined to become, but that didn’t happen.
During the birthing process, little McCade Armstrong lost his life, but this was just the beginning of his parents’ heartbreak. Life is beautiful, but it can also be really hard at times. Bad things happen, and that’s something that the Armstrongs had just learned on April 14, 2017.
Coping with the loss of their child was unbearable at first, but they still had each other to get through one of the worst things they had to do: bury their son. Although the loss of a baby during birth is rare, complications can happen without warning, and unfortunately for the Armstrongs, it did happen to them.
And although they would never be okay with him being gone, they still wanted to honor his memory and hoped others would do the same. But that wasn’t the case. McCain’s life was short, but he still was and would always be a very important part of the Armstrongs’ lives. He was the most beautiful thing they’d ever laid their eyes on, and his spirit would live inside their hearts. In the meantime, they had a place where they would always visit, but a darkness threatened to disturb his eternal rest.
Losing someone is always hard, and losing a child is all the more difficult. The Armstrongs never believed that was an experience they’d have to go through, already having two beautiful and healthy children. But they would soon find out that this loss would bring them closer together and closer to their community. The love and generosity of their family and friends kept them from sinking into despair, but they missed their little guy so much. Even in their grief, the loss brought the couple even closer, especially when they paid their son a visit at the Memorial Park Cemetery in Oklahoma.
But one day, they realized something was amiss. When the family first decided to visit the cemetery where they laid McCaid to rest, Jacob and Tashana prepared their other children for what would obviously be a very somber experience. But the family didn’t expect that this visit would also change the way they thought about their town. McCain would never get to play with toys like a regular child, but his parents frequented the graveyard and left adorable flags, pinwheels, and toys at his grave. They figured their son’s spirit would appreciate the items, but he never got to enjoy them for long.
And it’s not because he wasn’t alive. Leaving behind tokens of their affection on their son’s grave was a great coping mechanism, but it wasn’t long before they realized that their son wasn’t the only thing missing in their lives. Something else had vanished without a trace. Unbeknownst to the Armstrong family, something amiss was going on frequently at the cemetery where they laid their child to rest. Whenever they laid toys, trinkets, or letters down on their son’s grave, they disappeared by the next visit.
Surely there must be a reasonable explanation for this phenomenon. The brokenhearted parents realized that someone was taking the items they left behind. “The pinwheel doesn’t mean a whole lot to the next person, but it does mean a lot to the person who placed it there,” she told Inside Edition. But was it an animal who took them or some kind of monster in human form? Grave robbing isn’t a typical crime in small towns, and that certainly wasn’t the extent that this could be criminal was going to.
But to take children’s toys from grieving parents is cruel and devastating for anyone in the mourning process. But were the Armstrongs’ suspicions correct, or was it some sort of animal or natural phenomenon moving their trinkets? Little McCaid’s dad was really angry that someone had taken these items from his son’s grave. Some random stranger was stealing their baby’s toys. He wasn’t sure how to catch the bandit at first, but then inspiration struck, and he got to work right away.
He decided that the best way to catch the guilty party in the act would be to set up a hidden camera. So that’s exactly what he did. The camera was only a few feet away, but that’s all he needed to learn the identity of the grave robber. To catch their thief on camera, Jacob Armstrong had to find specially made cameras that could be reliable and undetected by other people in the cemetery. Armstrong didn’t want to harm anyone else’s mourning experience or alert the thieves that there was something more valuable to take than a child’s toys.
The camera Armstrong chose would blend in with the trees behind his son’s grave and not emit any light or sound while it was recording. Armstrong was willing to go to any lengths possible to ensure that his son could finally rest in peace. Once the camera was placed behind the trees, it was virtually undetectable.
And because the camera could be controlled remotely, Armstrong didn’t have to worry about being in the graveyard with the thieves to record their nefarious deeds. Thankfully, the camera did its job and proved that it wasn’t a curious animal or mysterious natural phenomenon moving their belongings, but a man who seemed to be purposely taking the items.
But would this footage be enough to catch their culprit? Not only did their camera catch a man stealing from their son’s grave, the Armstrongs also caught the thief stealing from nearby graves as well, proving that this wasn’t a targeted crime. And the strangest part was that the man seemed very nonchalant about what he was
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