A tree grows (and dies) in Brooklyn

By Tina Susman

October 15, 2009

Reporting from New York - The chain-saw killer struck in the dead of night, targeting young victims in a public park. Locals out for a Sunday walk found the remains the next morning: 12 oak and cherry saplings, their slender trunks sawed through, their delicate branches dangling like broken limbs above the freshly tilled soil.

It was the fourth tree-killing this year in Juniper Valley Park in Queens. Police went door to door looking for clues. Civic leaders offered a $2,500 reward for information leading to the culprit in the Sept. 13 attack. The case remains unresolved, as do seven other tree-slaying incidents across New York City this year.

In February, a huge cottonwood was found with a basketball-sized hole gouged in its trunk in Manhattan's Inwood Hill Park. In June, nearly 60 young trees were yanked from the soil and left for dead in the same park, two months after being planted on Earth Day.