IRVINE, CA \u2014 An Irvine man is accused of beating several ducklings, killing one of them, before tossing them into a trash can, authorities said. <\/p>\n
The incident happened around 10:52 a.m. Wednesday near Morena and Segura in Irvine, where a mother duck and several ducklings were swimming in a community pool, according to the Irvine Police Department.<\/p>\n
According to investigators, 71-year-old Randall Bertsch, who lives nearby, got into the pool, gathered some of the ducklings and placed them in a box. Shortly afterward, Bertsch used a plastic trash bin and struck some of the ducklings before throwing them into a trash can, police said.<\/p>\n
One duckling was found dead, and another suffered severe head trauma and was taken to a veterinary clinic for treatment, police said. The remaining ducklings escaped with the mother duck.<\/p>\n
The department’s Animal Services Unit and detectives launched an investigation and identified Bertsch as the suspect. After he refused to speak with officers, investigators obtained and served a search warrant at his home, where he was arrested on suspicion of animal cruelty. <\/p>\n
The case is expected to be submitted to the Orange County District Attorney’s Office after detectives complete their investigation.<\/p>\n
Anyone needing assistance with ducklings or other wildlife was encouraged to call Animal Services at 949-724-7000.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"IRVINE, CA \u2014 An Irvine man is accused of beating several ducklings, killing one of them, before tossing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":317063,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164],"class_list":["post-317062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=317062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317062\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/317063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}