Grave-Robbed Toddler to Be Cremated

A Stamford woman talks about her daughter becoming the victim of grave robbers.

By KRISTIE BORGES

Updated 12:45 PM EDT, Tue, Sep 8, 2009

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In July, Takara Whitley got the bizarre and disturbing phone call telling her the body of her 2-year-old daughter was stolen from her grave and turned up in a New Jersey river.

Now, about two months later, the Stamford mom spoke with the Greenwich Time and said she and her family decided to cremate her daughter and bury her during a private ceremony.

In July, Imani Joyner’s body was found in a plastic bag on the bank of the Passaic River. Her grave had been disturbed.

Investigators said grave robbers might have used the little girl’s body in a ritual with possibly ties to Palo Mayombe or Santeria.

Joyner’s family did not tell the Time which hospital Imani where and when the ceremony would take place. She originally was laid to rest in Woodland Cemetery in Stamford’s South End.

“I wanted closure, and I can’t sit up here and have this happen again,” Whitley told the Greenwich Time. “That’s one reason why we did it that way.”

She says her family and Christian faith got her through this summer.

Imani Joyner was born in November 1994 with semilobar holoproscencephaly, a condition that kept her brain from developing fully.

Doctors called her a miracle baby because children with the condition usually die before birth or shortly after. Imani survived until she was 2 ½.

Imani’s grandmother, Eunice, told the Time that what happened to her granddaughter this summer is “mind-boggling.”

“For someone to take her out of her grave and to put her into a plastic bag and throw her into the river like she’s nothing, that’s cruel and mean, “ Eunice said.

Police have no suspects in grave robbing.