snponline.com wrote:Memorial to Kilbourne student disappears

By PAMELA WILLIS

Teddy bears stood watch with other stuffed animals at the corner of Bent Tree Boulevard and Snouffer Road, along with comforting angels, crosses and flowers -- even a solar angel, which lit up a crash-site memorial created by friends and family of 16-year-old Kasey Burleson.

Burleson died Nov. 22 from injuries suffered in an automobile accident that occurred at that corner.

All 75 items that made up the memorial are gone today -- stolen between 5:30 and 7 p.m. Friday.

"The kids poured their hearts out for two months, leaving stuffed animals, angels and crosses. My mom had bought the solar angel, which lit up at night," said Marsha Burleson, Kasey's mother. "Kasey's friends also found things at the crash site like Kasey's broken sunglasses and her bracelets. I thought about taking those home, but her friends had put them there, so I left them. Now those are gone, and they are irreplaceable."

Burleson said the memorial had given her comfort when she visited the crash site, knowing how much Kasey was loved, and seeing the memorial grow as more kids visited.

"I was there at 5:30 that night, and everything was still there, but by 7 p.m., when some of the kids got there, everything was gone," Burleson said.

Kasey was a junior at Worthington Kilbourne High School. She was a passenger in a vehicle driven by Chris Shelly, a student at Olentangy Liberty High School, when it went left of center Nov. 22 near the intersection of Bent Tree Boulevard and Snouffer Road, striking another vehicle head-on, according to Columbus police reports.

Shelly currently is recovering at Ohio State University Dodd Hall.

Mrs. Burleson said the memorial even had jars of dill pickles, because Kasey loved them.

"I can't believe someone would do something like that," Mrs. Burleson said. "I go there every night. There had been about 65 to 70 kids at a candlelight vigil at the site soon after the accident, and many candles were still there. Kasey's friends would visit the site, burn the candles and talk to her, then blow them out."

Columbus police did not take a report on the theft.

Betty Schwab, public information officer for Columbus police, said a report would not be taken in such a case.

"Because it was a public area, and the items were not anyone's personal property, then it would be as if a person were evicted, and their belongings were left in the apartment and the owner set them outside the apartment -- it would be like a free-for-all," Schwab said. "Items that are put at a public corner as a memorial can't be said to belong to any one person."

But to Mrs. Burleson and Mark Burleson, Kasey's father, and to Kasey's friends, the theft deepens their grief.

"It is so hurtful for someone to do this," Mrs. Burleson said. "These kids spent their money buying nice things to put at the memorial -- things they thought about, that have meaning to them, to help remember Kasey. It is hard to believe someone could just take everything, when it meant so much to us."