Woman Arrested For Allegedly Throwing Boyfriend's Mother's Ashes Into Texas Lake
Police charged a Fort Worth, Texas woman on May 4 with abuse of a corpse after she threw the ashes of her boyfriend’s mother into Lake Worth, local station KXAS reports.
The Fort Worth Police Department said Ernest Smith, 38, told officers that his girlfriend Augustine Gladney, 40, confessed to him in a text message that she dumped his mom’s ashes.
It appears that the incident resurfaced recently after a TikTok video that purports to show Gladney throwing the ashes in the lake went viral on social media. It’s captioned, “He cheated so i threw his mom ashes in the river.”
However, there was no confirmation from authorities that the video is authentic. Some social media users have said the woman in the video is not Gladney but rather a comedian, explaining that the viral video is from a skit.
The Dallas Express reports that the police said Smith contacted them after he discovered his mother’s urn missing on June 3, 2020–nearly two years before they arrested Gladney. The two were dating at the time, but their relationship was on the rocks.
A break in the case came recently after Smith said he overheard Gladney tell her daughter on the phone that she threw the urn into the lake. About four hours after he heard the conversation, Gladney reportedly sent Smith the text confession, which he kept for evidence.
Gladney faces up to a year in prison and a maximum fine of $4,000 if convicted.
