A NJ woman said she was offended by her neighbor’s sexy Easter decorations.
Instead of filing a complaint w/the city of Clifton, she grabbed a pair of garden sheers and dismantled the entire display – IN FRONT OF OUR CAMERAS.
She is now facing a number of charges. @PIX11News pic.twitter.com/NvQcK73GqA
— Andrew Ramos (@AndrewRamosTV) April 9, 2019
A New Jersey woman was none-too-pleased with a Playboy Bunny-inspired Easter display on a neighbor’s lawn. In fact, she was so upset by the tongue-in-cheek decorations that she dismantled them on live television.
According to the North Jersey Record, Desire Shepstone was armed with a pair of garden shears and boldly made good on an earlier promise to another outlet’s on-the-ground anchor that she would be back soon to tear those double entendre-laced yard bunnies down.
WPIX’s Andrew Ramos tweeted that he caught site of Shepstone as he was “teasing the story” about the lingerie-clad and bunny-ear-sporting mannequins for the network’s late afternoon newscast.
“[A] woman who identified herself as a resident (and had told me earlier that she found the display disgusting and inappropriate) showed up,” Ramos noted. And then the one-woman demolition crew quickly set herself to work.
Ramos asked Shepstone whether “she was concerned about getting a fine or being arrested for destroying someone else’s property.”
The anti-Bunny vigilante was sanguine like a blood-red Easter egg.
“No, I think it would be worth it,” she said.
The now-dismantled mannequins belong to dentist Wayne Gangi.
In comments to the Record, Gangi estimated the damage between $500 and $1,000 and doubted Shepstone’s actual indignation at the display–noting that she waited until the cameras were rolling before she took the Bunnies apart.
“She curtsied at the end,” Gangi added.
The display came to him, he said, when he was shopping at Party City and saw a bunch of giant Easter eggs.
Gangi said he’d always–since he was a kid at least–liked the Playboy Bunnies and thought that meshing the idea of the Easter Bunny with Hugh Hefner‘s infamous rotating stable of models would be a good joke. “This one came back to bite me,” Gangi admitted. Nonetheless, he was shocked by the alleged act of vandalism.
After Shepstone’s performative destruction, however, Gangi went down to Clifton City Hall and dimed on the display destroyer. She now faces “a number of charges,” according to Ramos.
Local resident Cheryl Lueddek said the woman had no right to take apart the display.
“It’s absurd,” she said. “You can’t do that to people.”
But Shepstone appeared defiant in the face of the criticism and criminal charges.
“I think I did something right,” she told local NBC affiliate WNBC. “That’s disgusting already.”
[image via screengrab/WPIX]
