Kester Jack, a 28-year-old Brooklynite, was arrested Thursday for sawing down three trees on West 94th street between West End Avenue and Riverside Drive.
Jack, whose motivation wasn’t clear, used a handsaw to cut the trees, prompting several alarmed neighbors to call police, according to an NYPD official who spoke to West Side Rag. He was arrested in Riverside Park and charged with criminal mischief, menacing and possession of marijuana. Jack’s criminal history is “not extensive,” the official said, mostly consisting of arrests for marijuana possession. He apparently comes to the area to visit friends although he lives with his mother in Brooklyn.
One reader tells us a friend found a tree on top of her car, which had “lots of scratches.”
dude…
what exactly is the purpose for this??
reminds me of that scene in “The Jerk”
“He Hates These cans! He Hates These cans! – He Hates These cans!”
Another example of why we can’t have nice things. It breaks my heart when I go running on the Riverside path along the Hudson. The farther north you guy, the more littered and degraded the beautifully restored recreation/park area becomes. Why build these oases if the locals show no interest in preserving them?
This guy wasn’t a local.
A 28 year-old stoner and vandal who still lives with his mother? What a catch! Not.
Certainly no worries of dogs harming these trees!!
This is disgusting, but some UWS residents are killing trees out of ignorance. Ivy kills trees. Flowers around trees kills them by using up moisture, unless you water the tree often and deeply. Bricks on top of the soil, too small enclosures, many things kill trees slowly. Just walk around the area and you will see dead or dying trees.
You are 100% correct. I,, too, walk around this neighborhood saying the same thing!
I’ve talked to doormen, but they have little authority (or, apparently, knowledge)about the slow and inevitable death of these trees because ivy not only strangles the trees at top, but deprives them of water. I’m sure that the coop/condo boards who arrange for such plantings need to hear from their owners about the disaster they are promoting. Ditto for the fertilizer they spread. It would be more helpful if they simply cultivated the soil around the base of trees AND SLOW, DEEP WATERED WHEN THERE IS A DROUGHT.
Leftover Christmas lights around trees on the Broadway mall also kill them.
Bring back stop and frisk!
Reminds me of the NYC of the 1980s, which so many people are nostalgic over. Anything in the public space was defaced, destroyed and mutilated. Send this creep over to Syria to fight Isis and give him nothing but his precious saw.
It is a horrible thing to kill a tree, especially in a city where we do not have enough of them. They sustain us with oxygen, cool down the streets, etc. Hope they prosecute him as fully as possible. Maybe make him dig up and then plant new ones before jailing him. Why are people so F-d up in this world?
Yeah. I guess this validates legalizing marijuana for use other than medicinal.
And “stop and frisk” would do what, exactly? Take a hacksaw away? Nice touch would be to hang him from another tree in Riverside Park.
I suspect the “bring back stop and frisk” comment was sarcasm.
Unbelievable! – and it happened! I assume that he will be turned over for mental observation. Even if it turns out that he was working off a grudge, he must be unstable.
I found this story particularly heartbreaking because of the damage to a barely flourishing city and the positive environmental/emotional effect of trees in our neighborhoods.
Equally distressing is trying to imagine the reasons and the emotional state of Mr. Jack which would have motivated such action. Of course we don’t know his thinking but it seems quite likely that he was in a lot of pain himself and in need of psychological treatment and maybe concrete services as well.
We are not providing anything close to the services needed and the pain, the destruction, and in more serious situations, the needless loss of life continues – right in front of our eyes.
Well said mg
…. practicing for the Lumberjack competition?
Mental Health? He should have been dismembered and spread across the park. Not even 10 minutes after the act. His friends were running out of the shelter laughing and saying “*iggas went on a rampage, cutting trees” This problem will only go away after a neighborhood watch group is formed and action is taken directly against these savages. They intimidate, threaten and abuse the residents.
I can’t explain how many times I heard “white devil this, white devils that” maybe us Devils should cut those benefit checks these losers live off.
Thats the first thing that came to mind when i heard a lunatic was outside with an axe cutting trees, this has to be someone from the shelter. I was close as it was a friend of a friend from there. I’m still annoyed that they would allow a shelter to remain open in a neighborhood where a school is hundreds of feet away and rents are sky high. There has to be something that we can do to either have more security patrol or even have this place moved elsewhere. 95th street and broadway looks a scene from the 80’s. Horrific!
I was just on that block today and noticed it. Wondered what happened. My mom lives on that block.
As a literal treehugger, this breaks my heart. I don’t give a damn about the emotional state of the lumberjerk mama’s boy who did this.
“Dismembered and spread across the park”??? For chopping down some trees? Wow. Was that translated from the the original German or did you hear that at a Klan meeting?
If you are out very early in the morning, please — please — watch those who clean the restaurant sidewalks. Some let their water, containing potent cleansers, flow into the sidewalk trees.
Please speak to them about this or, if there is a language barrier, to the restaurant’s manager later on in the day.
Once, I even witnessed a cleaner empty his full bucket of dirty water into a tree base.
BUSTED!!!
https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/news/2015/06/19/man-arrested-for-allegedly-cutting-down-trees–threatening-people.html
When this guy gets convicted, I hope is community service is to help with the Free-A-Tree vine cutting campaign along the Saw Mill River in Westchester. Those vines are super-think at their base.
https://www.sawmillrivercoalition.org/
closing the state mental hospitals was a great idea.
This guy actually lives in the SRO in the neighborhood according to other news outlets. Other homeless people who reside there recognize him and say they are scared to live with him. This is all according to multiple news articles i read.
“A deranged homeless man who lives in a trouble-plagued Upper West Side SRO went on a rampage with a saw, chopping down four trees on West 94th Street while shouting “I’m king of the world” and riding a child’s scooter, neighbors said. “