told KTVU<\/a>.<\/p>\n\u201cIt\u2019s probable, or likely, that this person has harmed animals, especially wildlife, before this. It does appear that he had already burned the raccoon and was still pursuing it, which shows a mentality of someone who is perhaps familiar with cruelty to animals,\u201d Fenson warned.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt should be noted that people who hurt animals are often capable of hurting humans. It\u2019s just violence.\u201d<\/p>\n
The footage was captured on home security footage by a resident, who raised the alarm with local authorities.<\/p>\n
Raccoons, while mischievous and possibly irritating, are typically harmless to humans and pets. Most just want to pick through garbage cans or dumpsters for a snack, Fenson said.<\/p>\n
The racoon appeared to already have burns on its back, officials said. Animal Care & Control San Francisco via Storyful<\/p>\n
\u201cThey might do damage to property, like climbing houses and leaving scratch marks, or messing up a porch or something, but that\u2019s not being aggressive, they\u2019re just living,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was one aggressive individual in that video and that was the human.\u201d<\/p>\n
The man ran off when the home\u2019s motion-sensor lights turned on, allowing the racoon to escape. Animal Care & Control San Francisco via Storyful<\/p>\n
The attacker could be charged with harassment of wildlife, a misdemeanor, Fenson said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A sicko was caught on camera in California chasing a raccoon and trying to burn it with a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31780,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[18378,1147,26615,2356,5284,79,194,201],"class_list":["post-31779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-animal-abuse","tag-animals","tag-burns","tag-california","tag-san-francisco","tag-science","tag-us-news","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31779\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}