KEALIA — A driver Sunday damaged at least two gravesites at St. Catherine’s cemetery in Kealia.

An eyewitness said she was at the cemetery to visit the graves of her parents on their 62nd anniversary when she encountered a terrifying situation.

“This guy was freaking out on something,” said the witness, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. “He started driving down to the graves from the area above the water faucet.”

Described as a single male with a small dog in an older model white Ford Ranger extended cab pickup, the driver came down several rows of graves, and in an apparent attempt at trying to get out of the graveyard, started driving between the graves, the eyewitness said.

“It was scary. I had flowers for my parents’ graves, but at that point, I just dropped them, and was going to call 911,” she said. “But my husband said I couldn’t do that because it wasn’t an emergency, so we went to my sister’s house to call the police department.”

That was shortly before 4 p.m., Sunday.

There is a cemetery caretaker that comes daily to lock the gates at 4 p.m., the eyewitness said, returning to finish her gravesite chores with her sister and her husband.

“When the guy realized he couldn’t go any further, he reversed and tried to go in another direction, burning rubber on the grass,” the witness said. “He went down another row and his truck hit the Norfolk. That’s when we left.”

When she returned, the offending truck was gone, but on retracing its route, the witness said they came across graves where the truck had hit the gravestones and toppled them, and shards of glass from broken vases littered other gravesites.

“This is terrible,” the witness’s sister said. “People come here to spend time with their loved ones. But when things like this happen, they’re going to shut down the road to the cemetery parking area and tell people to park outside. How are the older people going to be able to visit graves of their loved ones?”

In September 2008, a car ran through the stone wall adjacent to Kuhio Highway and damaged several graves. That situation resulted in boulders being placed at that highway entrance, and boulders also being placed at the access road on Mailihuna Road, leaving just one gated road to access the cemetery.

An investigation into the incident was launched when Kaua‘i Police Department officers from the North Shore and Lihu‘e responded to the report.