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A man from New Jersey vandalized Maine's famous 300-foot-wide ice disk in Presumpscot River Thursday, saying he wanted to turn it into a peace sign.
The enormous ice floe has been floating in Westbrook, Maine, since January 14. It's mesmerized residents with its ethereal beauty, and inspired conspiracy theories about aliens .
The disk stopped spinning earlier this month. Christopher Angelo, a New Jersey resident, took the opportunity to climb aboard and transform it for his own ends, trying to carve a peace sign out of it with a chainsaw and ax.
"I'm an arborist, Im a tree climber, it makes me uniquely qualified to do this because I use chainsaws, ropes, I'm making a giant peace sign," he told WGME . "I want it to spin around so bad, and create that visual for people to see of peace making the world go around in Westbrook."
Angelo has a history of staging public stunts, according to the Portland Press Herald . After Hurricane Sandy in 2013, he climbed aboard rides at damaged theme parks.
Angelo didn't succeed in carving out a peace sign, but he did cut out chunks and create a long crack through the center. The city of Westbrook has a time lapse recording showing the damage.
"It isn't against the law to chop river ice," Westbrook Police Department Captain Sean Lally told the Portland Press Herald. Unusual? Yes. Why someone would come here from New Jersey to chop up an ice disk is beyond me. I do know that the river will continue to flow and the Maine winter is far from over, so Mr. Angelo might want to seek long-term accommodations if he intends to defy Mother Nature."
Meanwhile, a second, smaller ice disk has formed . In Baxter State Park, there's one that's around 40 feet across. It's still spinning.
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