Herron Taylor said she couldn’t believe it when she saw the Toomer’s Oak on fire early Sunday morning.
“My mind was so blown because you never think you’ll see something like that,” Taylor, junior in biomedical sciences, said. “I was standing there staring at the trees for a second. My first instinct was to try to put the fire out. But then it kind of hit me, there was nothing I could do at all to help the tree.”
Taylor was captured on film chasing Jochen Wiest, 29, after he allegedly lit the tree on fire.
A friend was taking a photo of Taylor and her boyfriend, Brendan McGowan, when he noticed Wiest pull a lighter out of his pocket.
“My boyfriend said ‘He just lit the tree on fire,’” Taylor said. “So I turned around and sure enough, the dude’s standing there with a lighter still in his hand.”
This is the first season Taylor has been able to roll the Toomer’s Oaks as a student – the original trees were poisoned by Harvey Updyke in 2010 – and she wanted to enjoy it.
“He was trying to get away and I was like ‘No, no – not today,” Taylor said. “We just got our trees back.”
Taylor and her boyfriend helped the Auburn Police Division identify Wiest.
She was giving a statement to police when she heard she was on film. The video of her chasing the suspect has since gone viral on social media.
“It’s such a blur to me,” Taylor said. “It’s been overwhelming. I didn’t think it was going to blow up like this. It was just an instinct thing.”
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