Sanford neighbors report stray golf balls, call sheriff’s office
Stray golf balls flew into a Sanford yard for about four hours, and the homeowner said the shots came from a home across a pond in a restricted neighborhood.
A Sanford homeowner said golf balls kept flying into his yard for about four hours Sunday afternoon, turning a quiet residential stretch into a safety complaint that ended with a call to the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office. Anil Kumar Srivastava said the shots came from a home across a pond and landed in several spots around his property, including near the water, on a patio table and beside a blue house.
Srivastava said he counted six golf balls and believed some had already been picked up before he began documenting the problem. He said he tried to get the golfers to stop, but the activity continued, leaving him worried that someone sitting outside or walking nearby could have been struck. No one was seriously hurt, but he said the repeated shots felt threatening to neighbors and to wildlife in the area.
The incident raised more than a nuisance complaint in a tightly packed Sanford neighborhood. Golf balls traveling across property lines can create a public-safety and property-damage problem when homes sit close together and a stray shot can reach a person, pet, windshield, roof or window in a split second. In Florida, the legal backdrop goes back to Miller v. Rollings, a 1951 Florida Supreme Court case that remains a reference point for the duty of ordinary care owed to people reasonably within range of danger.
For residents in unincorporated Seminole County, the sheriff’s office offers an online reporting system for non-emergency matters, including traffic complaints and house watch requests. The agency also maintains public reports and crime maps for unincorporated parts of the county, tools that can help neighbors track patterns when a disturbance may be more than a one-off annoyance.
County code enforcement may also come into play if repeated golf shots are treated as a nuisance violation in an unincorporated area. Seminole County moved code enforcement functions from the sheriff’s office to the Development Services Department beginning Oct. 1, 2025, and the county’s code-enforcement board hears nuisance cases. For Sanford residents dealing with repeated stray balls, the episode is a reminder that a backyard problem can quickly become a question of safety, liability and how far county authorities can go to stop it.
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