Woman Who Defaced Rocks At Rocky Mountain National Park Learns Sentence
DENVER (CBS4) - A woman found guilty in a rash of vandalism at national parks throughout the western United States has been sentenced.
Authorities say two years ago Casey Nocket painted faces on rocks in Rocky Mountain National Park and Colorado National Monument, among other national parks. She then posted her paintings on social media and got backlash which included harmful threats.
During Nocket's travels across the West she even stopped at the Ginn Mill bar in downtown Denver and one of the faces was drawn in the bathroom. It also became an attraction.
On Monday Nocket, 23, pleaded guilty to seven misdemeanor counts of damaging government property. She will have to serve 200 hours of community service for her vandalism.
The Instagram page that made Nocket famous has been deleted.
"People don't always understand their impacts, especially with wildlife," Dana Watts said.
Watts is the executive director of the Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics in Boulder.
"This is a tricky case because it seems to me just from reading that this girl knew what she was doing," Watts said. "I don't know that by educating her things might have been that different."
The face in the Ginn Mill bathroom was cleaned up two years ago. It wasn't as easy at Rocky Mountain National Park. Officials told CBS4's Jeff Todd it took several rangers hours of elbow grease and high-grade graffiti remover to take away as much of the markings as possible.
"If she also really understood the ethic behind Leave No Trace, that this is our land that we share, they're not making more land, it's a very finite resource, I think she might have thought twice about her actions," Watts said.
Nocket also got two years of probation where she is not allowed on federal public lands at all. She will also have to pay restitution. That amount has not been determined.
