GAINESVILLE, Tex. -- Vandals in Gainesville knocked over dozens of tombstones at Fairview Cemetery. Now officials are trying to figure out why.

When Fairview Cemetery worker Dusty Luton arrived to begin his daily work at on Tuesday, he was shocked to find dozens of broken tombstones on the ground.

"Once we got operations started, we found the stones. There's approximately about 40 stones overturned, vandalized. Some are broken, some we can just set back up, but some of them are going to have to be repaired," Luton said.

This is not the first time the cemetery was targeted. Several headstones were damaged back in June, and thanks to a witness, police found the people responsible.

Gainesville Police Chief Steven Fleming says this incident seems to be random.

"I would think this is just somebody that's in the cemetery wanting to do some mischief. Usually the only time we ever had any issues as far as the cemetery was during actual Halloween, but that’s been many years ago," Fleming said.

Whoever it was, Luton says it's disheartening because there is a lot of history at the cemetery. Nineteen thousand people are buried at the cemetery, and some of the stones damaged were from the 1800s.

"It’s horrible, you know. It’s unexplainable, what this is, what people do."

Fleming tells us it is also upsetting to see this kind of damage, and that is something that's pretty rare, even around Halloween when cemeteries are sometimes targeted.

"The extent of having 35 tombstones damaged is quite a bit for us. That's something that I haven’t seen, and I’ve been here for 17 years."

Fleming says his department will work hard to locate suspects for this case, and if they are caught they will face criminal mischief charges.