It happened as it had many times before at the Woodland Celestial Garden in Compton.
An intruder entered the graveyard in an attempt to steal headstones for their bronze and copper plaques, the owner said. But guarding the cemetery were three Cane Corso dogs — RoRo, Ghost and Zeus.
The intruder fled, but not before stabbing the three dogs, killing RoRo, said Celestina Bishop, owner of the cemetery and the dogs.
Bishop believes the break-in occurred in the early hours of April 10. She and her husband did not learn of the stabbings until that night when her husband showed up to feed the dogs.
After seeing the injuries to the dogs, they took them to an animal hospital, she said.
“My freaking dog died trying to protect a place that some families don’t even give a f– about! How many L’s do I gotta take,” she wrote on a Facebook post that same evening.
She said her other two dogs are recovering and are expected to survive.
The incident marks a violent escalation in a series of break-ins that have occurred at the cemetery that has faced years of financial hardship.
Bishop said she’s poured her own time and money into maintaining the cemetery with little to no outside support. She said the death of her dog was the last straw and she is now considering selling the property.
“The story is not about selling the property,” she said in the interview. “It’s about me reaching my hand out for six years and getting shot down.”
The exhaustion was already setting in last year when thieves broke into the property and took and damaged more than a dozen headstones from the graveyard, which is the final resting place for hundreds of veterans, including several Union soldiers from the Civil War.
Bishop’s mother and sister are also buried at the cemetery. They were both killed in South Los Angeles more than 40 years ago.
In January 2024, thieves took more than 700 headstones. Bishop said replacing the bronze and copper plaques can cost up to $4,000. She said she has been unable to replace them.
Bishop said she’s repeatedly asked the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department to increase patrols around the cemetery. She said she even gave the department keys to the cemetery so deputies could enter the graveyard to make arrests when necessary.
“And yet, things continue to happen,” she said.
A spokesperson for the department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The thefts are part of a cumulative loss for Bishop.
Last month, she said, her brother was killed by a hit-and-run driver in South Los Angeles. She also lost her son in a car accident in November 2024. She said she was still mourning the loss of her son when more than a dozen headstones were stolen.
“I’ve been losing since I’ve gotten here, you know,” Bishop said. “How long does anybody expect for me to do this on my own with the continued vandalism?”
