A stranger deliberately damaged five mighty beeches in the Haar forest cemetery, so that they probably died. Boreholes were discovered in the trunks into which, according to previous knowledge in the town hall, a liquid has been introduced. In the meantime, the police have intervened. Environment officer Andreas Nemetz was deeply affected by the incident in the local council on Tuesday evening and indicated that he did not have much hope that the trees would recover. But you should first stop to see if they sprout in spring.
The tree crime brings back memories of a series in which a perpetrator deliberately cut trees with a chainsaw years ago. Similar to back then, the act in the forest cemetery initially triggers head shakes for many. Mayor Andreas Bukowski (CSU) spoke on Tuesday of an “unpleasant” matter and added, considering the “relatively large boreholes” found in the trunks, that someone “knew very well what he was doing”. According to Nemetz, there are “five old beeches” in the so-called “maple grove” of the cemetery. The trees showed massive damage, the leaves had “shriveled up”. A real clearing was created in the dense tree population.
The community had observed the damage to the trees for a long time, but according to Nemetz only discovered about two to three weeks ago that someone must have acted specifically. However, a report to the police was initially not filed, which Nemetz justified when asked that the community did not expect much from it. But assume a conscious action against the trees in this place. According to Nemetz, the community wanted to try to clear up the incident with its own research and to specifically address survivors and family members who have graves in the area. There should also be signs with notices on the trees.
As a possible motive of the perpetrator, the environmental officer in the municipal council indicated that there had recently been anger about the leaves that fall from the trees and are only removed sporadically. After the municipal council decided to do without leaf blowers and leaf blowers in a test run, the building yard only cleared the paths. As a result, the leaves piled up on many graves.
A similar case from 2012 and 2013 was different. At that time, a man first sawed down freshly planted trees at the middle school in Haar and then took action against older trees, the trunks of which he saw as an amateur. This threatened to topple over. People were endangered. It was a real factual series in which trees 20 to 30 meters high were always sawed deep in the night and in some cases also felled.
A kind of clearing has emerged in the middle of the cemetery.
(Photo: Claus Schunk)
Several times after his operations with the loud chainsaw, the perpetrator narrowly escaped after residents had alerted the police about disturbing the peace. In September 2013, he finally went online to officers near the crime scene. They caught the drunk 56-year-old near the forest cemetery when he was about to walk around on his bike – covered with sawdust. He had the chainsaw with him, which was still warm. His last victim was a hornbeam with a diameter of 1.70 meters in the organic garden on Ferdinand-Kobell-Straße. Stephan Jochim, the deputy head of the Haar police station, remembers the arrest well. It was an extraordinary case. However, he rules out a relationship to the current act. As far as he knew, the perpetrator from that time acted out of revenge on the community and was psychologically stressed.
Almost eight years ago, an attentive population and a sensitized police force helped to solve another case. A tree fell into a power line and caused a power outage. The damage was immense. At the time, the town hall offered a reward of 1,000 euros for clues that led to the chainsaw perpetrator being arrested.
This time the town hall wanted to settle the matter without the police. But nothing will come of it. After learning about the incidents in the cemetery on Wednesday, Chief Detective Jochim announced that he would pick up the report “himself at the town hall”. Environment officer Nemetz confirmed during the day that the staff at the cemetery are now in contact with the police.