Mum distraught as heartless vandals target grave of tragic daughter, 2, who died swallowing button battery

A DEVASTATED mum wept as she slammed heartless vandals who targeted the grave of her two-year-old daughter.

Little Harper-Lee Fanthorpe died after swallowing a button battery from a remote control.

And mum Stacy-Marie Nicklin says sick thugs have repeatedly damaged the tot's grave in Carmountside Crematorium, Stoke-on-Trent.

“I’m already grieving, so for somebody to do that, there’s no words really,” she told the

“Harper’s been in that cemetery for six weeks.

"For somebody to go to her resting place and purposely break her stuff, as a mum that breaks my heart even more.

“Other parents go there to sit with our babies. That’s where we’re at peace.

"So for somebody to go and damage their property, it’s just beyond me.

“Leave the babies alone. Let them be at peace. That’s their resting place.

"As a mum I’m begging you, just please leave the babies alone.”

Stacy-Marie discovered parts of her little girl's grave had been vandalised or were missing on her daily visit to the crematorium.

“On three separate occasions some of the stuff was damaged." she said.

"I went back down there the other day, and I brought Harper a little train to go on her grave that spelled out her name.

“Somebody has broken one of the letters and tried to put it back together with chewing gum.”

The graves of other little ones have also been damaged during the distressing spree.

“As a family we’re going through the hardest time of our lives at the minute,” Stacy-Marie said.

“It is just people going in there and damaging things that don’t need to be damaged?

“They don’t need to be touched.”

Harper died in May after acid from the battery burned through her food pipe and into a major artery.

She was admitted to the Royal Stoke University Hospital after she started vomiting blood at home.

An inquest heard surgeons discovered a hole in the toddler's oesophagus.

However, during surgery, little Harper suffered cardiac arrhythmia and died.