Auburn University junior Herron Taylor found herself in an unbelievable position early Sunday morning.
The biomedical sciences major had participated in the university’s famed celebration following a Saturday night football victory: rolling the oaks in Toomer’s Corner. The Auburn Tigers and their fans were celebrating a last-second 18-13 victory over LSU when suspect Jochen Wiest, 29, of Auburn, allegedly lit the tree on fire.
Taylor told the Plainsman, Auburn University's newspaper, that a friend was taking a picture of her and her boyfriend, Brendan McGowan, when McGowan saw Wiest with a lighter in his hand.
"My boyfriend said, 'He just lit the tree on fire,'" Taylor told the student newspaper. "So I turned around and sure enough, the dude's standing there with a lighter still in his hand."
Taylor said her first instinct was to put out the fire, which had been ignited using a strand of the tissue the tree had been rolled with and which had engulfed the tree within seconds. She quickly realized there was nothing she could do to stop the blaze.
She turned her attention to Wiest.
"He was trying to get away and I was, like, 'No, no, not today,'" Taylor told the Plainsman. "We just got our trees back."
The oak trees in Toomer’s Corner are relatively new. Their predecessors were poisoned in late 2010.
Taylor told Fox 10 out of Mobile, Alabama, that she and her boyfriend realized they had to stop Wiest, who at that point was fleeing down the street.
"I was screaming, running after him saying, 'This is the guy that lit the fire,'" Taylor told the news station. "At that point, the tree had already been engulfed in flames, so a bunch of guys around me tackled him to the ground and started beating him up."
Taylor said rumors that the suspect was an LSU fan were false. An Auburn resident, he was wearing an Auburn hat at the scene, she said.
It was only later, when she was giving a statement to police, that Taylor learned she had been caught, chasing the suspect, on the city’s Toomer’s Corner surveillance camera. He had also been caught lighting the tree on fire.
The video has since gone viral on social media, with Taylor being called a hero for her actions.
Wiest, initially charged with public intoxication, had also been charged with desecration of a venerable object for setting fire to the oak tree. The Plainsman reported Monday afternoon that Auburn police investigators had added a felony charge of first-degree criminal mischief to Wiest's list of charges. He remained in the Lee County Jail, his bail set at $4,500.
Gary Keever, a horticulture professor at Auburn, told the Plainsman that he doesn’t think the burned tree is dead, but that its future remains uncertain. The upper and lower canopies, as well as the base of the trunk, suffered damage in the fire.
"Based on the leaf curl and off color of the foliage in parts of the canopy, these leaves will drop over the next several days," Keever told the newspaper.
If the tree survives, it could still suffer aesthetic death, in which its condition detracts from its surroundings. In that case, it may need to be replaced, he said.
It could be spring before the full impact of the fire is determined.
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