For days, police say, Samuel Patrick Groft cruised through the streets of Los Angeles on his bicycle, single-handedly chopping down about a dozen city trees with an electric chainsaw in three different neighborhoods.
Groft sometimes hacked away at large, decades-old trees in the middle of the night, others, he wielded his cordless power saw on busy sidewalks in broad daylight, according to surveillance videos reviewed by the Los Angeles Police Department.
The footage also showed that Groft’s destruction spanned at least five days, beginning on April 17 and continuing until his arrest on April 22 — Earth Day.
He has since been charged with felony vandalism and is being held on $150,000 bond. Efforts to reach Groft or an attorney were unsuccessful.
During a press conference, police said the cost of replacing the trees will be at least $347,000. But that estimate does not include three additional toppled trees discovered by the LAPD.
The root of outrage
A tree is shown chopped down in a Los Angeles neighborhood.
Los Angeles Police Department
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Media Moussavy was on a morning walk when he came across about a half dozen felled shade trees in downtown Los Angeles where he lives. He told NPR he was livid at the sight of the severed trees and immediately posted about it on his Instagram account @DTLAInsider.
Moussavy’s videos showed several of the older trees likely measured between 20 to 30 feet — only about 5 feet of their trunks remaining in the ground. Others were cut closer…
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