Brutality Against Defenseless Animals

I've worked in some branch of law enforcement or another since 1976, but I must admit there are some crimes that I still don't understand and probably never will. One of those crimes is brutality to defenseless animals.

The mystery is the motive for such a senseless crime. It doesn't get you money or any other valuable. It's not for revenge or sex. None of the normal motives fit this type of crime. The only thing I can figure is that the perpetrator just enjoys making a living thing suffer. Fortunately, this is not a behavior normally found in most humans.

But it happened in the tiny West Texas town of Iraan recently. The town of about 1200 is located about 115 miles southwest of San Angelo. Four high school students there -- ages 15-17 -- recently found a deer trapped on the school's baseball field. But instead of helping to free the animal, the four youngsters beat it to death.

It is not known what instruments were used to beat the helpless animal. They didn't even bother to remove the carcass of the dead animal, but left it on the baseball field to be discovered the next morning by others.

The school's superintendent said he was very surprised because "These are good kids." He is wrong. Good kids don't beat a defenseless animal to death just for the joy of watching it suffer and die. At the very least, these students need some psychological help. They also need to be severely punished for the crime.

The Parks and Wildlife Department is charging them with "hunting deer with illegal means" and "hunting deer in closed season" (the deer was killed at night which is not legal). Both of these charges are class C misdemeanors and are punishable by up to a $500 fine. That just doesn't sound like a harsh enough penality for this brutal crime.

But these youngsters are not alone. Similar crimes are being committed now in Van Zandt County. Some person or persons there have been shooting defenseless farm animals with a bow and arrow, and then leaving them to suffer.

So far, two llamas and two dairy cows have been shot. One of the llamas is dead. This is certainly not hunting. Anyone who has been around a dairy cow knows how slowly they move and how defenseless they are. Once again, this is someone who enjoys making an animal suffer, and I hope he is soon apprehended.

These are both pretty scary crimes. If they would do this to a defenseless animal that had done nothing to them, what would they do to a human that really made them mad?