{"id":8445,"date":"2025-10-17T16:11:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-17T16:11:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/8445\/"},"modified":"2025-10-17T16:11:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T16:11:08","slug":"person-driving-truck-hits-and-kills-48-birds-at-florida-dock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/8445\/","title":{"rendered":"Person driving truck hits and kills 48 birds at Florida dock"},"content":{"rendered":"

Florida wildlife officials and Brevard County law enforcement are investigating after a person in a truck struck and killed a large group of birds at a Port Canaveral cargo dock last week.<\/p>\n

Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission officers responded to a call from the Brevard County Sheriff\u2019s Office on Oct. 10, according to a FWC news release.<\/p>\n

Officers learned that a person drove a truck through the birds, killing 35 at the scene. Another 13 birds were euthanized due to injuries. One bird survived, according to the release.<\/p>\n

Members of the Florida Wildlife Hospital and Wild Florida Rescue, a local nonprofit, helped to provide care for the injured birds.<\/p>\n

Officials have not announced an arrest, but said they have interviewed a suspect.<\/p>\n

Ken Smith, a trained wildlife rescue responder with Wild Florida Rescue, told the Tampa Bay Times he received calls that morning to respond to a lumber area on the north side of Port Canaveral.<\/p>\n

Smith arrived to the scene and saw multiple birds crushed and injured on the dock.<\/p>\n

Smith credits wildlife officials with quickly responding, helping to place injured birds onto blankets and load them into trucks.<\/p>\n

Among the birds killed were herring gulls, sandwich terns and juvenile royal terns, Smith said.<\/p>\n

The birds were taken to Florida Wildlife Hospital in Palm Shores.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Megan Stolen, a research scientist who is on the board of Florida Wildlife Hospital, helped triage the broken legs and wings of the birds.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had not personally seen anything like this,\u201d Stolen said. \u201cThe injuries were really graphic.\u201d<\/p>\n

Heather Pepe, co-founder and chief operations officer of Wild Florida Rescue, told the Times that local wildlife lovers are hoping for an arrest.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are a lot of angry people that want to see that person pay a consequence,\u201d Pepe said.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Said Smith: \u201cAll you\u2019ve go to do is beep your horn. There\u2019s no excuse for plowing through them. We care about our wildlife. It matters.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wildlife officials said they have reviewed video evidence, collected physical evidence and talked to witnesses.<\/p>\n

The United States Fish and Wildlife Service is assisting in the investigation, according to the news release.<\/p>\n

Any charging decisions will be made by the Brevard County State Attorney\u2019s office.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Florida wildlife officials and Brevard County law enforcement are investigating after a person in a truck struck and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8446,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[8656,28,8659,30,29,3916,8658,2973,8657],"class_list":["post-8445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-dead-birds","tag-florida","tag-florida-fish-and-wildlife","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-injured-birds","tag-ken-smith","tag-port-canaveral","tag-wildlife-officials"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8445\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}