It was an am-bush!
A man went on a rose bush-ripping rampage in a Lower East Side park in an apparent attempt to fashion the plucked plants into a bizarre structure.
The bud-ding crook first pulled up the plants at First Park on to the E. Houston Street on the evening of April 23, and his psychotic pruning spree didn’t end until cops hauled him away a day later, a witness said.
“Sunday night, a guy came in and started tearing up the bushes,” said the park regular, who wouldn’t give his name. “It took them about 24 hours to come and get him!”
The city Parks Department says it sent some of its officers out just after 2:20 p.m. on April 24 and they took him to a nearby police station. But police say they didn’t make any arrests.
The flower plower was trying to construct a building out of the bushes, a park volunteer said.
“He was making some kind of lean-to structure, destroying roots and using branches to build something with it,” said Silva Ajemian of First Street Green Art Park, who didn’t witness the destruction first-hand.
One park-goer said he saw the rogue landscaper just before the harvest began, and he seemed one flower short of a bouquet.
“He was skinny, halfway dressed. He wasn’t talking to anyone. He looked like he had psychological problems of some sort,” said George S.M., 73.
Parks has taken the defiled plants into its custody, and is attempting to nurse them back to health, an agency spokeswoman said.
Additional reporting by Daniel Prendergast