March 29, 2024
BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE

Lilac caper no bed of roses for Boston flower sellers

BRUNSWICK (AP) — Snipping enough of the sweet-smelling flowers to make a bouquet would have been OK, but filling a van with lilac cuttings was too much for police, who slapped the cuffs on a pair of Boston men.

Paul Tselios and John Glasheen don’t plan to contest the theft charges against them. And they don’t plan to return to Maine — except for their court hearing in July.

Police confiscated the lilacs, which had been growing on town property, and gave them to local hospitals, arrested the two men, put them in handcuffs and took them to the station, where they posted cash bail of $325 each on charges of theft.

“I don’t mind someone cutting a few lilacs for a small bouquet at home,” Deputy Police Chief Richard Mears said Tuesday. “But when you start cutting a van full, that’s a crime.”

“These guys decided they would rape and pillage a couple of lilac trees. Our job is to see that the town of Brunswick is protected from all kinds of (people), including people who steal and destroy town property,” Mears added.

Tselios said he was merely doing what he had done for the last 12 years — searching the area for wildflowers and taking them back to Boston to sell to florists.

Tselios said he and Glasheen came to Maine because the lilacs in Massachusetts had already bloomed.

“That’s how I make my living. But I’m never going to step in Maine again,” Tselios told the Portland Press Herald. He added that he and Glasheen did not plan to contest the charges.

“If that’s their law, it’s their law. I just can’t believe they did it,” said Tselios, who also is known as Lucky.


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