Killing for a View: Arboricide Alleged

A couple of months ago, John Petrick and his wife, allergist Dr. Maria Petrick, noticed a branch on their 60-foot oak tree was dying. They called a neighborhood arborist to remove it before it fell onto their house on Sunset Drive, on the edge of Healdsburg city limits near Fitch Mountain.

As the dying branch was removed, in early November, the tree worker climbed down from the ladder and, according to John Petrick, asked them if they were trying to kill the tree.

“A strange question I thought, since it was obvious we were just having a branch removed,” Petrick said later. “He then pointed out drilled holes on the side of the trunk facing our neighbor’s house, originating just over the height of the fence.  These holes were overflowing with, according to our tree expert, a form of herbicide intended to poison and ultimately kill the tree.” 

The Petricks were shocked. The arborist showed them a photo he had taken—two holes had been drilled into the trunk, and a bluish fluid had seeped out and was clearly damaging the tree. The tree was on the north side of their property, on their side of a redwood fence. And a ladder was seen leaning onto the tree from their neighbor’s backyard.

The blue fluid was apparently a compound called “copper green,” sometimes used as a “tree hardener,” but which prevents photosynthesis and, thus, can kill a living tree. The investigating police officer concluded it was “a copper naphthalene and hydrocarbon solvent.” 

Both houses face south from the shoulder of Fitch Mountain, looking toward a miles-long view of what used to be called Sotoyome Valley extending to Santa Rosa and beyond, toward distant hills in Marin County. It’s an exceptional view, and John Petrick is fond of saying they have the smallest house in the neighborhood, but the best view.

While the Petricks’ view was unimpeded, the 60-foot oak at least partially obstructed the view from their neighbor’s wrap-around, second-story deck.

Five years earlier, when the Petricks moved in, they had some brush cleared that the fire marshal had recommended be removed to provide defensible space in the wildfire-risky mountain neighborhood. At that time their neighbor, in one of the few conversations they had, asked if they would remove the tree as well. They declined.

Other Cases

“Strange as it may seem, my wife and I read a story over the summer (I believe originally in the Wall Street Journal), and yesterday we found out it happened to us,” said Petrick when he alerted The Healdsburg Tribune to the situation.

That story concerned two homes in a wealthy enclave of Camden, Maine—one on the shores of the Atlantic, the other situated just behind it. In 2022, the owner of the second home poisoned two trees that were obstructing his view, and despite the outrage of the community and the neighbors, and a $1.7 million settlement, the second neighbor now enjoys an improved view of Penobscot Bay.

“We thought our story was/is one of those you just wouldn’t think would happen here,” Petrick said, but it turns out not to be an entirely isolated incident, even in Sonoma County. In 2018, a vineyard owner east of Sonoma woke to find one of her large oak trees had been felled—one in the line of sight of a house behind them that now, by coincidence, enjoyed a better view.

Farther afield, last year a large spreading sycamore oak in northern England that grew from a gap in the millennia-old Hadrian’s wall was severed at its base by a heavy-duty chainsaw. It took months to track down the two men who may have been responsible for the crime. They were charged by Northumbrian police with damaging both the tree and part of Hadrian’s Wall, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

That historic tree—which played a part in Kevin Costner’s Robin Hood movie Prince of Thieves—was valued at $785,000 by prosecutors.

Police Report

When the Petricks reported what they believed to be a crime to Healdsburg police, one that involved trespassing and damage to private property, an officer came up to investigate. He visited the site, contacted the neighbor and discovered not one but two ladders leaning on the common fence.

The neighbor at first denied he poisoned the tree, then said he hadn’t drilled the holes, then asserted the tree was really on his property not Petrick’s—despite the obvious fence separating the two properties, the ladder leaning across the property line to the tree and the tree’s wounded trunk.

“[He] then began to tell me something about property lines and how he let the fence be built at that location even though his property line was behind the fence line,” reported Officer Joe Janowczyk. “I advised that if that were the case the tree would be his and not in Petrick’s backyard.”

The officer issued the neighbor, Dwight Hinton, a citation to appear in court on Dec. 4.

Janowczyk asked the district attorney to file two misdemeanor charges against the neighbor: for willfully injuring, disfiguring, defacing or destroying “any object or thing of archeological or historical interest or value, whether situated on private lands or within any public park or place,” and a separate violation for damaging material without a written permit from the owner.

When Hinton showed up at civil court on Dec. 4, he found the charges had been dismissed.

Petrick was disappointed that the DA was disinclined to pursue the charges, recommending instead a civil court solution—sue the neighbor for the cost of removing the tree (at least $10,000, the value stated in the police report). It was not a criminal issue, said the deputy DA Josh Kovach, because “there was a property line dispute” and such cases are usually resolved in civil court.

Though he insists it is a criminal matter involving trespassing and destruction of private property, Petrick has contacted a civil court lawyer whose specialty is environmental vandalism, a term Petrick finds apt to the situation he faces.

But the resolution could be months away, at the earliest. Meanwhile, said a discouraged Petrick, “The sad part is the perpetrator will eventually get what he wanted. A dead tree, a better view and probably increased home value. We’ll see …”