South Carolina: Bethany Polutta, 18, Austin Kizer, 19, and two juveniles arrested after posting photos and videos of themselves laughing, torturing and beating an opossum to death

SOUTH CAROLINA -- Two adults and two teenagers are facing misdemeanor charges after a “disturbing” video was posted on Snapchat that showed an opossum being hung by its tail dangling over a dog and beaten with a baseball bat.

However, animal activists groups are pushing for further charges in an online petition, saying that the misdemeanor charges “in no way cover(s) the actions of these defendants.”

Bethany Polutta, 18, of Summerville, South Carolina and Austin Kizer, 19, of St. George, South Carolina, along with two people under age 18, have been charged with ill treatment of an animal, according to David Lucas, of the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources.

Lucas said the two adults will appear in magistrate’s court, while the juveniles’ cases will be handled in family court.

 

Authorities began investigating the incident in September when a video was posted on Snapchat that appeared to show several teenagers beating an opossum with a baseball bat in a garage.

People who saw the Snapchat video took screenshots of the incident and turned them over to the Department of Natural Resources, Lucas said.

“I think anyone who saw (the screenshots) would think it’s disturbing,” Lucas said.

The video sparked anger and uproar on social media. Renate Hartland, a wildlife volunteer in Seattle, launched an online petition to Dorchester County Solicitor David Pascoe demanding harsh punishment for the abusers in the video.

Hartland, along with other animal activists, named the opossum “Hope” and started the Facebook page “In Light of Hope” for the animal’s supporters. The Change.org petition has more than 33,000 signatures and the Facebook page has more than 1,400 followers.

The petition requests more serious punishment than the misdemeanor abuse charge, which carries a maximum punishment of 90 days in jail or a fine of up to $1,000 on the first offense.

Instead, petitioners are asking for the offenders to face felony charges for torture, torment, or cruel killing, with a minimum punishment of 180 days in jail.

“The animal suffered repeated, persistent, merciless pain,” the petition reads. “The pain and suffering inflicted upon the opossum goes far beyond anything tolerable in a decent society. This is not ‘generic’ animal suffering, this is specific torture and torment.”

Lucas said Monday that further charges from his department are not expected.

“The case on our end is closed, but the solicitor might further investigate the incident,” he said.

This is the second time in six months the state’s Department of Natural Resources has investigated teenagers abusing an animal on Snapchat.

In May, two Ridgeland, South Carolina men were charged with animal abuse after investigation into photos of a group of men pouring beer down an alligator’s throat.

In response to the opossum incident, PETA has sent letters to schools in the area urging them to implement humane education.

“We’re facing a bullying epidemic, and these boys allegedly beat an opossum to death with a baseball bat and bragged about it on social media,” said PETA spokesperson Marta Holmberg in an online press release. “TeachKind is urging schools to implement humane education and adopt an official policy against cruelty to animals that will help prevent a shocking crime like this one from occurring again.”

(Miami Herald - Oct 9, 2017)

Earlier:

• South Carolina: Future serial killers - Laughing teens tortured and beat opossum to death with a baseball bat then posted photos and videos on Snapchat.

Related:

Pennsylvania: High school football players charged with animal cruelty, accused of beating, torturing and killing animals for fun

Nebraska: Despite admitting to being present when 3 teen boys killed a cat they'd tortured, judge rules Kirk Van Pelt not guilty of animal cruelty

Australia: Opossum torturer Hunter Jonasen, 18, punched a stranger so hard that 'part of the victim's lip was missing' while on probation for torturing a possum and posting the video to Snapchat

North Carolina: Teens Jared Rose and Kalob Hubbard torture and burn opossum alive and are so proud of themselves they post on Instagram

 

North Carolina: Two future serial killers beat opossum and then set it and its babies on fire, killing it

The sister says of the opossum, "You shot its tongue off. The poor thing.... oh my God. This is way more bloodier than the skunk."

New York: Several teens filmed themselves gleefully torturing a turtle to death. Maximum punishment? $250 fine and "up to 15 days in jail". But we all know that jail time will NEVER happen.

Hawaii: Christian Gutierrez given 45-days in jail for torturing albatross birds to death by breaking their bones, chopping off their feet, kicking them, stomping them, and beating them to death with a baseball bat.

Massachusetts: Boy killed by pit bulls in Lowell is mourned at funeral

MASSACHUSETTS -- Pallbearers eased the little boy’s narrow coffin from the hearse and turned to carry it up the steps into St. Michael Church.

Behind them, a small group of family and friends huddled still and silent in the cold. The only sound was the idling of the police motorcycles that had pulled up moments before to block traffic.

Mourners wore T-shirts that showed the smiling face of the little boy they had come to bury: 7-year-old Javian Candolario, who was mauled to death last Sunday by two pit bulls in Lowell. At the funeral Saturday morning, another young boy, who looked not much older than Javian, helped carry his coffin up and into the church.

Candolario’s funeral was private, and family and friends did not speak with reporters.

 

 

The child was attacked on Clare Street late last Saturday afternoon, after he apparently entered a fenced area where two pit bulls were kept next to a home, according to the Middlesex District Attorney’s Office. Neighbors said they summoned help as soon as they saw the dogs dragging the boy, but it was too late.

When police arrived, they shot one of the dogs, but it jumped the fence and ran a mile before they caught it and put it down. The other dog was taken by animal control.

The boy’s death has reignited debate in Lowell about whether pit bulls are too dangerous for residents to keep as pets.

THE STATE OF MASSACHUSETTS IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS LITTLE BOY'S DEATH

The city tried in 2011 to regulate the breed after a string of vicious attacks, requiring pit bulls to be spayed or neutered as well as muzzled and leashed when off their owners’ property, but the ban was overturned after the state passed a law preventing local communities from banning specific breeds of dogs.

On Tuesday night, the Lowell City Council voted unanimously to have the city manager investigate “the viability of measures” that can be taken “against certain breeds of dogs.”

Saturday’s funeral lasted about an hour. When it was over, mourners spilled out of the church, some weeping. Before the procession to the cemetery began, a woman walked over to the back of the hearse that held the boy’s body and pressed her head to the windshield. When she turned to rejoin the group, another woman walked over and made the sign of the cross against the glass.

 

 

(Boston Globe - Oct 28, 2017)

Earlier:

• Massachusetts: Pit Bulls attack and maul seven-year-old boy to death
• Massachusetts: Lowell boy, 7, killed by pit bulls: ‘No one knew what to do’
• Massachusetts: The Legal Implications Of The Lowell Pit Bull Case
• Massachusetts: In Memory of Javian Candolario, mauled to death by a veteran's "therapy" Pit Bulls

Massachusetts: In Memory of Javian Candolario, mauled to death by a veteran's "therapy" Pit Bulls

MASSACHUSETTS -- His name was Javian Candolario.

He was sweet and inquisitive and he was seven years old and he’ll never see eight because a couple of pit bulls tore him to pieces in Lowell the other day.

Rodney Elliott is a Lowell city councilor and will go to his grave believing there is a chance Javian would be alive today if a state law had not negated a 2011 ordinance he sponsored that required, among other things, that pit bulls be kept in pens when outside.

In the days that have followed Javian’s death, Elliott has received emails from across the country, and even a few from Lowell residents, suggesting that he is an ignorant jerk for wanting to reinstate restrictions on owning pit bulls.

“About the nicest thing they’ve called me is a dog hater,” he said.

Oliver, Elliott’s Bichon Frise, would be surprised to hear his owner being dismissed as a dog hater, because Elliott is very good to Oliver. Oliver weighs 13 pounds and the worse thing he could do to you is pee on your leg.

Pit bulls are capable of killing people, and they killed Javian Candolario in the most gruesome fashion.

I’d like to see the get-a- lifers who are spewing hatred at a guy who is trying to do the right thing sit down with Javian Candolario’s mother and tell her that Javian’s death is regrettable but, hey, pit bulls have rights, too.

That mother saw what was done to her son. She will never be the same. Nor will others who saw it. Five of the police officers who arrived too late to save Javian are traumatized, receiving counseling. They will never unsee what they saw.

 

 

After police shot one of the dogs, it jumped the fence and ran for a mile before police cornered it and put it down.

“That dog had 15 bulllets in it,” Rodney Elliott said.

The details are still sketchy, but it appears Javian went to pat the dogs, who were in a fenced yard.

“The dogs pulled him over the fence,” Elliott said.

What followed, what was done to the boy’s body, was horrific beyond words.

“I think if people knew the gruesome details, they might not be as quick to judge the idea of placing more restrictions on owning pit bulls,” Elliott said.

Maybe he’s right. But, out of respect for the family, he’s not disclosing those details.

Elliott said the dogs’ owner works as a corrections officer and did not register the dogs with the city as required. Nor does it appear the dogs had the required rabies shots. The dogs’ owner has a lot to answer for.

Javian Candolario will be waked Friday at the Fay McCabe Funeral Home, where the good folks are donating their services. There will be a funeral Mass at St. Michael’s on Saturday, and Javian will be buried in a donated plot.

But Rodney Elliott believes the city of Lowell owes Javian Candolario more, a legacy that will protect others in his memory. He has heard experts claim there is no data showing that pit bulls are more dangerous than other breeds but he laments the dearth of data and says common sense, and common decency, demands more.

He was heartened to learn that People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, an animal rights organization, issued a statement Thursday saying they agreed on the need for placing restrictions on pit bull ownership. If PETA favors restrictions now, he says, others can change their minds.

“Pit bulls are the most often abused, most frequently abandoned, and most likely dogs to be left in a backyard like a cheap alarm system with a beating heart,” said Daphna Nachminovitch, PETA’s vice president of cruelty investigations. “PETA supports the city of Lowell in its efforts to regulate pit bull breeding and urges it to pass a mandatory spay and neuter law that would protect all members of the community, including the dogs themselves.”

Cue the emails, claiming the PETA people are dog haters.

(Boston Globe - Oct 27, 2017)

Earlier:

• Massachusetts: Pit Bulls attack and maul seven-year-old boy to death
• Massachusetts: Lowell boy, 7, killed by pit bulls: ‘No one knew what to do’
• Massachusetts: The Legal Implications Of The Lowell Pit Bull Case

Indiana: Neighbor beats Pit Bull with 2x4 to stop attack on small Poodle

INDIANA -- Ethan Mitchener posted on Facebook October 19, 2017 at 12:37pm · Garrett, IN ·

Just had to save my neighbor's poodle from getting killed by a pit bull. Thankfully it didn't hurt any of the little kids playing in the yard and i got there just in time to stop it.

Kaleb Antrup - You the man

Ethan Mitchener - Thanks but I wish i could have got there sooner. The poodle was covered in blood and really beat up.

Mike Zumbaugh - Did you shoot it?

Ethan Mitchener - No i beat it almost to death with a 2x4

Brad Johnson - Ethan Mitchener, a 9mm works better

Massachusetts: Lowell boy, 7, killed by pit bulls: ‘No one knew what to do’

MASSACHUSETTS -- Unsettled neighbors who watched in horror as a 7-year-old Lowell boy was mauled to death by two pit bulls Saturday night insisted yesterday there was nothing anyone could have done to save the child.

“He was already gone as soon as we got there. No one knew what to do — probably 15 people just watching it happen ... just screaming,” said David Swiniarski, 22, whose roommate called 911.

The boy lived on Clare Street, just a few doors up from where he was killed inside a neighbor’s fenced-in yard.

A woman and a young girl entered the enclosure yesterday to place a vase of yellow sunflowers next to a large blood stain and a piece of wood in the center of the driveway, several feet from where police found the boy’s remains in a bed of leaves next to a Patriots gas grill.

“I feel like if someone got in there, they were next,” Swiniarski said. “There was nothing anyone could do. Two 100-, 120-pound pit bulls ... It was actually horrific to watch.”

Police were combing the densely populated street in Lowell’s Pawtucketville neighborhood yesterday for anyone who may have seen how the boy got in the yard, either through or over a chain-link fence that yesterday had a chain hanging from the gate above two cinder blocks to hinder it from opening inward. No one was charged in the incident as of yesterday.

A man who answered the phone at the address where the dogs lived told the Herald he was “not at liberty to discuss the matter.”

 

 

The boy’s family could not be reached at their home; however, witnesses identified his mother as a woman wailing, “Oh, my baby!” on disturbing video one neighbor shot of the attack. The child’s name had not been released as of last night.

Middlesex District Attorney Marian T. Ryan and Lowell police Superintendent William Taylor said in a joint statement Saturday the child was already dead when police arrived at about 6 p.m.

“I’d see him riding his bike up and down the street. He was just a little boy who loved to be free, always smiling, always laughing,” said Giovanni Miranda, 28, who has an 8-year-old daughter.

The dogs, he said, “barked a lot. They would bark every time someone walked by.”

Roger Rodriguez, 56, said the young dogs were a brother and sister. The male, who escaped and was shot dead by police, was named Brighton, he said. The second pit bull was in the city’s custody. The owners, Rodriguez said, are an Iraq war veteran, for whom the dogs provided emotional support, and his girlfriend.

“They’re good people,” he said.

Rodriguez’s girlfriend, Jean Remon, 45, said the owners previously warned kids not to come in the yard. They said neighborhood kids often stood outside the fence, teasing the animals.

Remon said the dogs were well-cared for. “We never had a problem with those dogs,” she said. “Never.”

(Boston Herald - Oct 23, 2017)

Earlier:

• Massachusetts: Pit Bulls attack and maul seven-year-old boy to death