Police have caught two young men who allegedly filmed themselves throwing puppies into the Whakat\u0101ne River and shared the footage on social media.<\/p>\n
Yesterday, members of the public contacted police after seeing a video of two males allegedly lobbing the puppies, described as very young, into the river and using a social media platform to showcase their actions.<\/p>\n
Police area response manager Senior Sergeant Cam MacKinnon said police also received information from the public who witnessed the males taking puppies out of what looked to be a pillowcase before tossing them into the river.<\/p>\n
\u201cTragically, the puppies drowned in the river.\u201d<\/p>\n
MacKinnon said this wilful ill-treatment of animals is \u201cunacceptable in any form\u201d and is an offence under the Animal Welfare Act 1999.<\/p>\n
“As with this incident or any similar behaviour, we will robustly work to hold these offenders to account for their actions and this includes restrictions on bail during court proceedings.<\/p>\n
MacKinnon confirmed both offenders had now been located.<\/p>\n
A 19-year-old man was charged with cruelty to an animal, and a 17-year-old male was been referred to Youth Aid.<\/p>\n
Police also acknowledged the members of the public who contacted and assisted investigators.<\/p>\n
It said anyone else with information in relation to this offending could provide it via 105.<\/p>\n
SPCA regional manager Jason Blair said the agency was aware of the “both distressing and concerning” footage.<\/p>\n
As the matter was with police, it could not comment further, but said its animal welfare officers were available to assist with any inquiries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Police have caught two young men who allegedly filmed themselves throwing puppies into the Whakat\u0101ne River and shared…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":356653,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[50,67,42,43,1756,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-356652","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-animals","9":"tag-crime-and-justice","10":"tag-headlines","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-tauranga-bay-of-plenty","13":"tag-top-news","14":"tag-top-stories","15":"tag-topnews","16":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=356652"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356652\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/356653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=356652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=356652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=356652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}