A group of teenagers broke into a closed Brooklyn golf course on Sunday, trashed its golf cart fleet, damaged the course and stole five other carts to take on a joyride around a nearby neighborhood, resulting in more than $100,000 in damages, according to The New York Post.
Police responded to a 911 call around 9 p.m. on Sunday night, and upon responding, nearly crashed a squad car into one of the vandals as he drove a stolen golf cart near the scene of the crime.
Marine Park Golf Course has yet to reopen following closures resulting from the coronavirus pandemic, and now the owner says the course will be saddled with even more adversity.
“It looks like a tornado hit the course,” Richard McDonough, the director of golf operations, told The Post.
In all, 25 of the course’s 60-cart fleet was wrecked, which will cause additional monetary damage as the course was preparing to reopen under social-distancing guidelines that require golfers to only ride one to a cart.
“This comes at a particularly difficult time because we’re trying to plan for an opening,” Michael Giordano, who runs the Marine Park Golf Course, told News 12 The Bronx.
The vandals used the carts to ram the cart barn fencing in order to get the stolen carts out. Once on their joyride and observed by the police, the vandals scattered into a nearby shopping plaza parking lot where one 16-year-old boy was apprehended.
The teen was arrested on charges of burglary, grand larceny, criminal mischief, reckless endangerment and criminal trespassing, according to The Post.
Vandals trash 25 golf carts, cause $100,000 of damage at New York golf course https://t.co/mmRTtNFHv4 pic.twitter.com/iRiaD0rH1B
— Golfweek (@golfweek) May 26, 2020
“The longer the New York City courses stay closed, the more opportunity for vandals to do their destruction,” Marine Park Golf Course General Manager Stephen Fabrizio told Golfweek.com.
Marine Park Golf Course had been closed for more than two months prior to the break-in.
