18 year old Victor Munoz Jr. headstone destroyed by tornado

Hello, my name is Kyle Rice. I walked down to the Oakwood Cemetery in Pleasant Hill, Iowa to take some pictures to show the devastation after the tornado tore through the neighborhood Friday night 4/26/24. When I got there I kept seeing a man standing still and staring at this headstone.

You could definitely tell that he wasn’t there to look around at anything else except for this headstone. He was there the entire time I was walking the cemetery back and forth taking pictures for a hour. I noticed his eyes never left that headstone for so long so I knew something was definitely wrong. When I began to leave, I walked by and asked him how he was doing. He said this headstone is for his 18 year old son and it was destroyed by the tornado. He showed me a previous picture of it being much taller with a beautiful memorial portrait of his son, a cross, and his nickname “Vic” with a big red heart. He started crying and said that it was such a beautiful memorial to his son and he has no clue how he’ll ever be able to replace it.

This was heartbreaking to witness and it really wrenched my gut just thinking about what this man is going through after just losing his son and then a tornado comes through destroying the memorial he had made for him.

No one is supposed to bury their children let alone good through this all over again. Please let’s help Vic’s family replace his headstone without the burden of financial expenses. They’ve already been through it once before. I don’t think they should have to go through it all over again because of a tornado.

I’m setting up a GoFundMe for this man, Victor Munoz Sr., the father of Victor Munoz Jr. with his bank account information so he directly gets all of the funds. Any help is extremely appreciated. Thank you for your support during these tough times.

KCCI News Channel 8’s story.