footage<\/a> from a business in the area captured a white S.U.V., believed to be a late-model Jeep Grand Cherokee, racing down a street to run over three geese at around 9:50 p.m. on April 15. Its driver then doubled back to where the birds lay dead and slowed down to observe the carnage before driving away, investigators said.<\/p>\n\u201cFor somebody to deliberately go out of their way to hurt an animal, there\u2019s something very wrong,\u201d said Chief Roy Gross of the Suffolk County S.P.C.A., an independent, nonprofit organization.<\/p>\n
He estimated that the vehicle reached 50 miles per hour in the episode on April 15.<\/p>\n
A person who saw the dead birds alerted a local animal rescue group, which reported it to the S.P.C.A., Chief Gross said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese are wild animals, but people care,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019re innocent animals.\u201d<\/p>\n
The pattern of dead geese being found over several days suggested \u201cintentional and repeated acts of cruelty\u201d to S.P.C.A. investigators, the organization said.<\/p>\n
The S.P.C.A. is offering a cash reward of $7,500 for information leading to the arrest of the driver. It increased its initial reward of $2,000 after four animal welfare organizations offered funds to bolster the reward.<\/p>\n
The driver could face up to one year in jail and a fine of up to $1,000 for each bird that was killed, according to Chief Gross.<\/p>\n
The S.P.C.A. has received some tips since announcing the increased reward on Tuesday, Chief Gross said, adding that the organization has previously investigated a similar case involving cars striking and killing ducks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Animal cruelty investigators on Long Island are searching for a driver who ran over about a dozen Canada…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":208004,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1457,81967,27895,82441,9,11,10,49,51,50,82440,81826],"class_list":{"0":"post-208003","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-animals","9":"tag-fines-penalties","10":"tag-geese","11":"tag-hauppauge-ny","12":"tag-new-york","13":"tag-new-york-headlines","14":"tag-new-york-news","15":"tag-new-york-state","16":"tag-new-york-state-headlines","17":"tag-new-york-state-news","18":"tag-society-for-the-prevention-of-cruelty-to-animals","19":"tag-suffolk-county-ny"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208003\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/208004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}