The cause of a tombstone collapse that pinned 6-year-old Adonis Cordova at Mountain View Cemetery in Altadena on Wednesday remains unknown. The cemetery said its investigation was incomplete and that it knew of no prior incidents involving the monument, which it said had stood for about 100 years, CBS News reported.
Cordova’s family said the roughly 100-pound marker came down while he was reaching for his ball. His mother, Kaylyn Hampton, told CBS that he was pinned and bleeding, and that his foot was blistered and painful after the family freed him. A family friend tried to lift the stone. The family said cemetery staff did not seem to understand the seriousness of the situation; the cemetery did not speculate on what caused the fall while its investigation continued.
The family took Cordova to a hospital, where X-rays showed no apparent break, according to CBS. His ankle remained swollen days later, and he was using crutches. These are the family’s reported account and recovery update; the cause of the collapse has not been established.
A separate California case
Mountain View Cemetery says it was founded in 1882, according to its visitor-information page. Its long history does not establish why this particular marker fell. A separate case illustrates that toppled grave markers have also been the subject of injury claims elsewhere in California: The Mercury News reported that a gravestone fell onto 17-year-old Diamond Kanongataa at Cypress Lawn Memorial Park in Colma in September 2023. Her lawsuit alleges negligence and seeks damages; those allegations are not court findings. The two incidents are examples, not evidence of a trend, and the Colma case does not establish what happened in Altadena.
A 2015 statement from the California Cemetery and Funeral Bureau describes its consumer-protection work as including complaint investigations, inspections and discipline of licensees. That description does not show that the Bureau inspected the Altadena monument or has investigated this incident, the Bureau’s statement says.
