A local resident and his daughter are upset by the fact that vandals deliberately ran over several newly planted trees in Hartman Green Park, east and south of Ecole Olds Elementary School (EOES) playground.
The damage occurred the weekend of June 9.
Trees were smashed over and mulch was spread around in some places. Tire tracks could be seen. It looked to some like someone was doing doughnuts in the area as they ran over trees with a big vehicle.
Olds RCMP suspect the damage is connected with a stolen vehicle.
On June 10 at approximately 6 a.m., Didsbury RCMP received a complaint of a stolen Ford F-350 truck.
About two hours later, Olds RCMP received a report that several trees were run over by a vehicle in the Hartman Green park.
"There was extensive damage to new trees and vehicle parts were left at the scene," an RCMP news release says.
An hour later, the Olds RCMP received a report of an abandoned vehicle on the Olds College campus. Officers checked it out and concluded that it was the same Ford F-350 that had been stolen from Didsbury.
"The vehicle damage was consistent with the parts left at the scene of the vandalism and there were tree branches stuck in the grill," the RCMP news release says.
As of late Thursday, no suspects had been identified.
Town employees could be seen Monday, June 11 pulling out the damaged trees.
Mark Johnson and his daughter, Faith, a Grade 4 student at EOES, saw the damage first-hand on their way to school the morning of June 11.
"She was pretty upset by it. They were new trees and they were starting to turn green and everything was looking nice. It upset her that somebody would just do that," Johnson said.
He said students have been advised not to go near the trees for fear they could get hurt by broken chunks of tree lying around.
"As a parent it's upsetting that, because of somebody's stupidity, that the kids suffer," Johnson says.
"If somebody sees something or knows something, turn them in."
Johnson is also upset that as a taxpayer, he's paying for that damage.
He says it's obvious it was deliberately done.
"It's not like somebody went out there, they were drunk, and they were just scurrying around and they hit one. You can tell by the tracks that they purposely did it," Johnson says.
"They were spinning their tires and that. You could see that they had turned around and went back over, turned around and went back over."
He says the grass in the area appears to be dying off where the tires repeatedly ran over it.
"It upset my daughter because she likes nature. She likes trees, she likes animals," Johnson says.
"That's what she said: why would somebody do that? It's so wrong."
He says Faith didn't even like it when larger, older poplars that had been growing there were cut down.
