CAPE CORAL, Fla. —  A man's vehicle was vandalized and his father's ashes were dumped in his front lawn, authorities said.

Wayne C. Carraway, 35, said he believed a robber broke into his 1987 Ford Bronco and thought a cedar box with a plastic bag full of his father's ashes contained drugs. Nothing in the car was stolen, he said.

"I'm just trying to think about what they thought when they opened the box up and saw a baggie full of ashes," Carraway told the Cape Coral Daily Breeze.

Carraway's father died in 1995. Carraway was going to spread the ashes along the Fakahatchee Strand in the Florida Everglades, his father's favorite fishing spot. He said he normally kept the ashes in his house.

Someone broke into the locked vehicle while it was parked outside Carraway's home Sunday night or early Monday morning, authorities said.

Carraway found the box on the ground near the ashes. He and his wife dug up the grass and ashes, and Carraway said he still plans to take what remains to the Fakahatchee Strand.