{"id":743,"date":"2006-02-24T07:54:40","date_gmt":"2006-02-24T15:54:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2006\/02\/hatred_of_hydrangeas_leads_man_to_maim.html"},"modified":"2006-02-24T07:54:40","modified_gmt":"2006-02-24T15:54:40","slug":"hatred_of_hydra","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/archives\/2006\/02\/hatred_of_hydra.html","title":{"rendered":"Hatred Of Hydrangeas Leads Man To Maim"},"content":{"rendered":"

An arborcidal maniac terrorizing Union Square Park finally is brought to justice<\/a>:<\/p>\n

An East Village vandal was nabbed red-handed yesterday after rampaging through the roses — and the redwoods and the magnolias — and running up $24,000 worth of damage in Union Square Park, authorities said.<\/p>\n

Parks Department officials said David Sasson, 34, of East 14th Street, spent the past three weeks committing horticultural homicide before he was arrested in the park at 1:30 a.m.<\/p>\n

Officials said Sasson thrashed 23 hydrangea bushes, 12 red-stemmed dogwoods, 10 holly bushes, seven roses of Sharon, three butterfly bushes, a Chinese dogwood, a magnolia tree and 20 ornamental trees during his three weeks of arboreal abuse.<\/p>\n

They had no explanation of why Sasson went on his strange rampage.<\/p>\n

Sasson was captured after two officers from the Parks Enforcement Patrol staked out the park and lay in wait for several nights.<\/p>\n

“He was in the process of ripping branches off trees,” said Parks Department spokesman Warner Johnston, who added that the arrest went down “very smoothly.”<\/p>\n

Sasson used no ax, choosing to take matters into his own hands.<\/p>\n

“He was doing this with his bare hands,” said Johnston. “He reached up into the tree branches and pulled off the limbs.”<\/p>\n

Sasson faces second-degree criminal mischief charges and something called “destruction or abuse of trees,” said district attorney spokeswoman Barbara Thompson. He could get up to seven years for the bush whacking.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

See also: Arborcide — Don’t Do It<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An arborcidal maniac terrorizing Union Square Park finally is brought to justice: An East Village vandal was nabbed red-handed yesterday after rampaging through the roses — and the redwoods and the magnolias — and running up $24,000 worth of damage in Union Square Park, authorities said. Parks Department officials said David Sasson, 34, of East […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jerk_move","category-manhattan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}