Reward fund aimed at catching Edmonds’ Hutt Park tree vandals

Tree damage at Hutt Park.
Tree damage at Hutt Park.

The Edmonds woman who first discovered the vandalism to trees in Hutt Park has established a reward fund for information leading to the arrest of the person responsible for the damage.

Laura Martin told My Edmonds News Tuesday that donations are welcome to the online GoFundMe “Find the Hutt Park Vandal Fund.”

The page says:

The Hutt Park vandal(s) have hacked, chiseled and slaughtered over 100 decideous trees (i.e. maples and alders) and left them to die. Some of those trees are around 200 years old. It is a devastatingly vicious and costly attack on Mother Nature, and the vandal(s) need to be held accountable.
Please help support your Seaview neighborhoods’ cause to find the vandal(s) responsible for this damage by making a contribution to our Find the Hutt Park Vandal Fund.

 

  1. This was just an awful thing to hear. It really is actually kind of scary – this is just such weird behavior. Who would do this? A sociopath? Truly, they need to find this person and I think our Edmonds City Council should pay the reward. Or the Parks Department? Personally, I would be very happy to see some of my local tax dollars used to fund a substantial reward to find the perpetrator/s. How about Edmonds City Council – offer a reward of $5000 and I bet someone will come forward and drop a dime on the criminal who did this!

  2. I spent some more time in the park today looking around after hearing that there was extensive damage outside of the trail system, and it’s true. Whoever did this seems to mostly be targeting maple trees, which is tough to fathom; they are some of the most amazing fall color in our area. None of the older evergreens have been touched, as far as I can tell, so there’s that at least.

    Having spent a couple hours in there now I am just as baffled as I was initially. I am pretty certain that what’s being used is a machete, though, and a sharp one. The blade is very narrow and it has too much momentum behind it to be any sort of knife.

    One thing that puzzles me is that whenever I’ve been in the park, I have seen people; I’d estimate someone wanders through every 20 minutes or so during the day. Whoever did this spent a lot of time in the park doing it, and they were pretty brazen. Were they doing it at night? Some of what they were doing would make noise, also.

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