Teenagers Charged With Torturing, Killing Mother Opossum And Her Babies, Posting Video Of Killing To Snapchat
Two teenagers have been arrested for brutally killing a mother opossum and her babies, then posting video of the horrific slaughter onto Snapchat.
The arrests took place in Kennesaw, Georgia, this week, with police saying that the pair came across the mother opossum and one of her babies. As WFMY News reported, the teenagers allegedly used a baseball bat to beat the mother opossum to death, then used a chemical mixture including bleach and ammonia to kill three of her babies.
The teens filmed the entire incident, then shared it on the social media network Snapchat. A fellow high school student who saw the video alerted police, who apprehended the pair. Police arrested 19-year-old Rocquavious Williams and a 16-year-old who was not named.
In Georgia, opossums are considered a game animal and there is an open hunting season that runs from October through the end of February. But the teens are alleged to have killed the opossums in early April, and police officers said the manner in which the animals were killed looks nothing like hunting.
“The way in which they killed the animals is not consistent with harvesting… There’s no reason for this kind of abuse,” Cobb police officer Sarah O’Hara told the Marietta Daily Journal.
O’Hara added that the Snapchat video of the mother opossum and her babies being killed was among the most disturbing things she has ever seen as a police officer.
Neighbors of the two teenagers say they are glad that police caught the pair before they could cause even more damage or escalate to more killings.
“It’s really disturbing, scary. They have to be punished for it,” the neighbor told WFMY News. “I’m glad they got caught before it was a small child or something else they would go after.”
Teens charged with killing mother opossum and babies with baseball bat https://t.co/FmafWW9QFj
— Robb Edwards ? (@RobRobbEdwards) May 15, 2018
This is not the first time that a disturbing case of cruelty to animals was cracked when the perpetrator shared their own video of it. In another incident that took place in February 2016, a Chicago teenager filmed a video of himself boiling a pot of water on his stove and then throwing the boiling water onto a stray cat on his porch. As the Daily Mail noted, police were able to apprehend the teenager after he shared video of the unprompted attack.
The teenagers who allegedly tortured and killed the mother opossum and her babies are charged with five counts of felony aggravated cruelty to animals, and Williams faces an additional charge of contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
