For more than 24 hours last week, Cody Lee Miller perched in a giant sequoia tree in downtown Seattle, pelting people and cars with pine cones and tearing off branches to throw like spears into the street below.
Investigators said Miller harmed the 90-foot tree, and they have come up with a figure for the damage, using a complicated formula that goes far beyond the value of natural beauty.
A Seattle tree expert, Darren Morgan, said Miller caused $7,800 in damage, according to court documents released this week. Investigators took into account the tree's age, its potential life span and how much of its lush foliage was denuded.
The formula, created by professional foresters, goes like this. The trunk is 34 inches in diameter at breast height, an investigators' report said. The tree has a "95 percent species rating," a "100 percent condition rating" and a "100 percent location rating," Morgan was quoted as noting in his calculations.
The sequoia's pre-damage value was put at $51,700. But after Miller's arboreal escapade, the tree lost 15 percent of its value, the documents show, and was now worth $43,900, the report said.
"The damage to the tree was extensive," the report said.
Miller was charged Monday with first-degree malicious mischief and third-degree assault. He was also ordered to stay away from the tree by observing "no unwanted contact" with it, according to the documents released by King County Superior Court.
It was not immediately clear if Miller would be responsible for paying for the damage to the tree, but any charge of first-degree malicious mischief requires prosecutors to show there was property damage of more than $5,000.
Giant sequoias grow fast and live a long time, usually up to 3,200 years in the wild, but in an urban setting, their life span is curtailed to 200 to 300 years, according to the investigation report.
The Seattle Transportation Department planted the sequoia when it was 20 feet tall in the early 1970s near a Macy's store at Fourth Avenue and Stewart Street. Officials fought to save it in 2010, when experts questioned whether it could survive in its city environment.
Miller, 28, who is from Oregon, climbed the tree about 11 a.m. on March 22. When a few police officers arrived, he refused to descend.
Over the next 24 hours, Miller's day in the sequoia became a local and national spectacle, fueled by a #ManInTree Twitter hashtag and a live video feed of the situation. About 70 officers and negotiators, some using ladders, tried to coax him to the ground. An impromptu fan club grew around the tree as people held up signs defending his apparent pursuit of solitude.
He threw pine cones and other objects at law enforcement officers, pedestrians and firefighters, striking three officers, the documents said. He also threw an apple at a passer-by and a metal ring affixed to the top of the tree for Christmas decorations at rescuers, the court documents said.
There were minor injuries.
By the time he climbed down, apparently without injury, on March 23, Miller had snapped off most of the branches at the top of the tree.
In addition to the $7,800 damage tally, there was an "incalculable" waste of time and services by the officers who worked at the scene, the charging documents said.
In an interview with The Seattle Times this week, Miller's mother, Lisa Gossett, said she had not talked to her son for about five years when a friend called saying he was in the news. She said she hardly recognized him.
"There are all these people out there worried about the tree, but they're not worried about him, the human," she said. "He's obviously sick."