Defaced Child's Tombstone Left On Yuba City Blind Man's Front Yard

YUBA CITY (CBS13) - A menacing message was left at a Yuba City man's home. A baby's tombstone was stolen, defaced and left in the man's front yard.

Doug MacIvor doesn't understand -- why him?

The terrifying message crossed out the baby's name and date and wrote in MacIvor's with a death date of 5/14/12.

Going blind hasn't stopped Doug from living a good life. "Just because you lose your sight doesn't mean you can't do whatever you want," he said.

Now it seems someone wants that life to end.

"Never had anything like this occur before in my life," Doug said in an interview in Sacramento, where he works for Caltrans.

Doug got an unnerving call from his neighbor on Tuesday.

"He says, 'I know Doug because you're blind you didn't see it, but we found it out in your front yard."

It was a morbid message, an actual gravestone with Doug's full name scrawled in marker complete with his birth date and a death date three days ago.

"Somebody is pretty screwed up that would think that this is a great joke or is some way to send a message," he said.

Doug, who is active in church, says he has no clue who would want to send him such a chilling threat.

"I have no enemies that I'm aware of, but apparently someone really doesn't like me," he said.

Sutter County sheriff's deputies say they are taking the incident very seriously and still trying to figure out from where the headstone was stolen. The nearby Marysville city and Catholic cemeteries were recently vandalized.

But they may know who it belongs to, a baby who died the day he was born almost 57 years ago to the day. The granite 16 inch-by-24-inch gravestone bears the name Dale Johnson, born and died on May 12, 1955.

"I really hope they find the individual that had the audacity to go and desecrate some little child's grave," he said.

"It's scary especially for some people, especially around here," a neighbor said.

Neighbors are now left on edge, but Doug says the death threat won't stop him from living his normal life.

"If I were to crawl up in a ball and say I'm not going to do anything, I'd let the lousy SOB win," he said. "That's not going to happen with me."