Man confesses to throwing 3,000 balls into Joshua Tree National Park to honor dead golfers

[Elmore Furth]

A 57 year old man who lives with his 84-year-old father and works at a local golf course, was charged with littering, feeding wildlife and abandoning property. It is estimated that it will took 373 staff hours, or about $9,000, to manage this case of putting 3000 golf balls and other sundry litter in Joshua Tree National Park.

A man claiming he was paying tribute to dead golfers tossed up to 3,000 golf balls into the biggest sand trap he could find: Joshua Tree National Park.

But where 57-year-old Douglas Jones saw commemoration, park rangers saw wholesale littering, and he faces possible jail time and other sanctions.

" Sometime around 2007 our rangers began discovering large quantities of golf balls in some turnout areas of the park," said park spokesman Joe Zarki. "We were wondering what was going on here. There were also some tennis balls involved."

Contrary to what rangers originally thought, Jones wasn't chipping golf balls into the desert with a club. He was hurling them from his car.

Golf balls in the national park: a subpar tribute?

[petronius]

1. I'd say this dude is a few clubs short of a golf bag... (nt)

[Bertha Venation]

2. That's one of the weirdest things I've ever heard.

And one of the weirdest people on the planet earth.

[joeybee12]

3. Man, how stupid are some people?

Maybe a life sentence will keep such an idiot from doing anything like this again...only semi-serious about the severity, but come on, how dumb is dumb?