An Alabama man is set to face trial after being arrested for placing flowers on the grave of his fiancée.
Winston 'Winchester' Hagans lost his fiancée, Hannah Ford, in a car crash in January 2021, just one month after getting engaged.
After her death, he built a wooden flower box lined with pictures of the couple to place by her grave, and even spoke to city officials to make sure it was okay for him to leave it there.
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Yet Hagans kept returning to the grave to find the flowers thrown out, even after he replaced them.
Then, one day last month, after being pulled over by police for driving with an expired license plate, he was told Ford's father had signed a warrant for his arrest for criminal littering for placing the flowers at his fiancée's grave.
'The cop said, 'I’ve never seen this before, but the warrant is for littering,' he told the Washington Post.
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The preacher said he was aware that Ford's father hadn't approved of their relationship, with the family having even banned him from attending his fiancée's funeral.
But he claimed none of her relatives had ever contacted him to ask him to stop leaving flowers. 'In the graveyard where my darling is, there are dozens of other planters and plants. This is crazy,' he said. 'I just want to be able to put that flower box on my fiancee’s grave.'
'The last things I heard her say were, I love you, and I hate leaving you,' he told WRLB-TV, recalling that he had kissed Ford goodbye as she prepared to drive home after the couple had been to visit a potential wedding venue.
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In a statement, Auburn Police Department said: 'In Alabama, certain burial plots are owned and controlled by the family of the deceased and therefore are private property. Any citizen has a right to pursue a criminal charge upon showing sufficient probable cause exists to believe a crime has been committed. The individual charged in this case turned himself in to the Auburn Police Department on January 24th, 2022, after a warrant was signed by another citizen.'
A trial date for the case has been set for March, and while Hagans said he's still not spoken to Ford's father about the arrest warrant, he said he is hopeful that the charges will be dropped at an upcoming hearing.
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Topics: US News