A British-American woman arrested and accused of vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool this summer, only for the charges to be dropped, has said she felt “publicly humiliated” by her ordeal.

The Department of Justice abandoned its misdemeanor charges against Dr Sophie Dennison-Gibby, Justin Carreno and Cameron Thiers last week, as well as a felony charge against Olympic canoeist David Hearn.

The DOJ conceded in court filings that poor workmanship, not sabotage, was to blame for the loose scraps of liner seen bobbing in the water.

Speaking publicly for the first time to The Washington Post, Dennison-Gibby, a veterinarian originally from Portsmouth, England but a naturalized U.S. citizen since 2014, recounted the circumstances of her arrest on June 20.

She said she had been standing beside the famous landmark in Washington, D.C., when she noticed what she assumed was a piece of trash floating in the water and bent down to pick it out, explaining that she is fanatical about litter-picking. It turned out to be a remnant of the pool’s peeling liner that had come free.

Dennison-Gibby said she was then approached by a U.S. marshal, who told her: “Well, I wish you hadn’t done that. Now I’m going to arrest you.”

The officer handcuffed her arms behind her back and led her away, as other members of law enforcement surrounded them.

“That’s when things got really scary,” she told The Post, explaining that she had not known where she was being taken or for how long she might be detained.

The answer turned out to be a Park Police facility in Southwest Washington, where she was processed and fingerprinted before being released later that day.

Hearn has offered a similar account of his own arrest, telling the Post he had been passing by the pool on a bicycle when he saw an “already peeling piece” of what turned out to be the liner and reached into the water to retrieve it so that he could examine it.

The decision by Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, to dismiss the indictments Friday was met with fury by President Donald Trump, who lambasted her in the Oval Office Monday by saying she had “choked” and “folded like an umbrella.”

He has so far refrained from firing Pirro but has reportedly held several tense private meetings with her and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum in recent days.

Asked about Trump’s insistence that politically-motivated vandals are to blame for the setbacks to his makeover of the pool – which cost $14.7 million but saw it turn green with algae as soon as it was refilled – Dennison-Gibby said she had felt nauseous when she heard his comments.

“To be called out by the most powerful person in the world, the president of the United States, and called a sick, violent vandal when all I had done was pick up a piece of trash was awful,” she told The Post.

“The whole experience has just been so heartbreaking. I chose this country. I’ve been naturalized here for 12 years. Nothing about this feels good.”

Although she admitted she felt humiliated by her arrest, Dennison-Gibby said she was more concerned about the impact the episode could have on her 10-year-old daughter.

Relieved to see the charges against her dropped – which could have seen her fined $1,000 and sentenced to 180 days in jail, had she been convicted – Dennison-Gibby told the newspaper she remains unnerved by the experience.

Earlier this week, her attorney Jamison Koehler told NPR his client was also found to have trash in her possession when she was arrested, as well as the piece of liner.

“Of course, the government doesn’t mention the fact that in addition to finding the pieces of the Reflecting Pool in her purse, they also found trash,” he said. “Because the trash didn’t fit with their narrative.”

Koehler claimed that prosecutors “had no interest” in receiving witness statements or video when he attempted to pass them over.

“She’s been fingerprinted, she’s been photographed,” he said. “She has a mug shot. She’s in the FBI database… She’s horrified and petrified.”