Pine Ridge Golf Course vandalism a mystery

Reward offered for information

By Steev Riccardo

OXFORD - At around 4:00 a.m. Saturday morning at least two people entered the prestigious Pine Ridge Golf Course grounds in Oxford, removed a 300-pound golf cart from a locked pen, brought it to the green on the third hole, and burned it to the ground.

“They took the cart onto the third green tipped it on its side, undid the gas cap, let the gas flow out on to the green, and they ignited it,” said General Manager Ken Duquette. “ It turned the golf cart into basically rubble. There is nothing left to it. It had to burn for over an hour.”

The assailants, who were on foot, avoided surveillance cameras by coming in through the backside of the golf course.

“It had to be somebody local on foot and it had to be at least two people. The police watch this place like a hawk. A lot of them are members here, they would have spotted a car easily.”

Duquette has never seen anything like this at the course before. The only prior vandalism that has occurred at Pine Ridge in the past was “light stuff, never to this extreme.”

The crime, unfortunately, was a costly one as well, to the tune of about $25,000 in damage.  The golf cart was worth 5,000 but the real damage was what the fire did to the green.

“This was a devastation due to the hours and the money that is spent on these greens,” said Duquette. “It disappoints me. This is our sanctuary, we need to send a message to our youth that this was a lack of respect for a beautiful golf course.”

Assistant Superintendent Brad Allen, who was one of the first employees to witness the damage, was shocked by what was found.

“It had a sickening look to it. We work real hard to keep this course beautiful and when you see something like that it was like, Wow, it looked like something exploded,” said Allen.

“We came in at six o’clock in the morning and there it was, a pile of melted metal. It was turned upside down and then lit on fire so the roof just melted to the grass, so as we were pulling the burnt stuff up we were ripping the sod out with it. We had to clear off the debris and we had to clear off the sod.”

Allen said that they were hoping to get the green ready by the middle of next week but until then have “made a temporary third hole in the fairway.”

There is a reward being offered, the amount undisclosed, leading to the arrest and the conviction of the people who did this.

When we spoke to Sergeant Tony Saad of the Oxford Police Department he said that the department did not have any leads. “We are looking for some help, if anybody knows anything or hears anything, give us a call.”

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