Posted on 09/15/2019 12:13:39 PM PDT by NorseViking
A Florida man who dragged a shark to its death from a high-speed boat has been jailed for 10 days.
Robert Benac III will pay a $2,500 fine, perform 250 hours of service at an animal shelter and lose his fishing licence for three years after pleading guilty to misdemeanour of animal cruelty.
Benac accepted the plea deal just as he was about to go on trial on Thursday for a more severe felony charge of aggravated cruelty to animals, according to The Bradenton Herald.
A second man, Michael Wenzel, accepted a similar plea deal over the incident in February and he was also required to serve 10 days in jail over five weekends.
It is understood charges were dropped against a third man, Spencer Heintz, who was also arrested.
The case came to light when the video of the men dragging the shark behind a boat in July 2017 went viral.
The men can be heard laughing in the footage which was posted on social media.
Robert Benac has been jailed for 10 days. (Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office) Robert Benac has been jailed for 10 days. (Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office) Look, its already almost dead, one of the men says in the video as he points towards the shark.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission launched an investigation into the video.
Read more
Following the incident, other videos emerged showing the men shooting a shark and pouring alcohol down the throats of live fish.
(Excerpt) Read more at yahoo.com ...
I have nothing against hunting and fishing...I have done both much of my life...But people who abuse and torture animals ain’t worth SH!T, in my opinion....
“My thought exactly. I know I am in minority now but thought a jail term for it is too much. Although it doesnt make these gentleman good guys.”
Yeah it was a stupid thing to do ... and then followed by more stupidity in putting him in jail for dragging a fish. Stupidity thrives these days.
Keep an eye out for his name. If someone will do that to an animal, he will do it to a human. It is only a matter of time.
Proper correction would take place at a Neighborhood Mens Club meeting assembled behind a members garage.
Since when did it become illegal to shoot a shark?
When I lived in Fla people would catch sharks just to kill them by any means they saw fit. Nobody released the stupid things unharmed, they were shot or stabbed.
Pouring whiskey down a fish’es throat makes sense
That being said, I'll happily eat fish and flesh and fowl...
“Robert Benac ‘III’
There’s a hint.
Agreed. No reason for a jail cot. Hell, I wouldn’t even make him pay a fine. But, he’d be doing some serious community service.
The perps should have performed a human abortion instead. No problemo there. Kind of weird that killing a human is OK but killing a nasty shark is too much for the woke sensibilities.
I swear I’m living in a “Far Side” cartoon.
They didn’t just shoot the shark, they are sick psychos who dragged it behind their boat.
So people who work at abattoirs should be locked up?
Im with you. Dead is dead. Whether they whacked it in the head with a hammer, it is still just a large fish.
I knew a kid when I was in Boy scouts in the 1970s who usee to get excited by torturing salamanders and frogs. He would cut the limbs off salamanders, torture them to death and throw frogs live on a hot plate and we would get sick watching him, just real revolting stuff, you knew something was seriously wrong there and I always wondered if he ever ended up as a serial killer. Just an absolute and complete lack of any kind of sympathy or compassion.
If someone legally hunts and kills an animal and posts it on Facebook, they get death threats.
It again proves that if you have 3 people and want to ‘keep a secret’, kill 2 of them.
Oh, yes....if you REALLY intend to keep it somewhat of a secret, leave your cell phone and cameras at home.
A lot of people sure are idiots...much like the ones that ask ‘alexa’ or their phone where the nearest gas station or fast food restaurant is then ‘complain’ later because your phone is ‘tracking’ you...
Solly Chollie, can’t have it both ways....
That’s just silly sick would have been if they dragged it behind a pick up truck on th and way home
“.... but what could be cruel to a shark?”
You would be surprised. Sharks are highly evolved and incredibly smart and have good memories, incredible senses, and even display an ability to learn. In fact, a scientist working in Florida was able to train sharks in a laboratory setting to remember colors and events much the way small mammals have been observed in similar tests. Most of the sharks brain is dedicated to smell, but these animals are not your average fish.
They have frequently been seen expressing curiosity and even problem-solving skills. It has not yet been discovered what the body-to-brain mass ratio has to do with the intelligence of the animal, but the shark’s is similar to most birds and mammals and can experience pain and fear in stress situations like cutting its oxygen supply down by dragging it tail first and, obviously, shooting it.
People dont like them because the people have been introduced to the killer and not the animal. Yes they do kill .to eat. So do we .and more. According to the University of Florida, whose area has the largest amount of shark attacks in the world annually, even more than Australia or Africa, in their International Shark Attack File they investigated 130 incidents of alleged shark-human interaction occurring worldwide in 2018. Sixty-six cases represent confirmed unprovoked shark attacks on humans. Thirty-four of the remaining cases were confirmed as provoked attacks on humans. In retrospect, just over 920 people have been shot in Chicago this year, 2019, through just 91/2 months. Year aint over.
If you study up on sharks, youll find they serve a very important service to the planet with their consumption alone. And when you consider theyve been around without help for over 400 million years, longer than trees have, Id say they were doing something right. But no animal deserves to be tortured. We are supposed to be the smartest animal because we can reason best. How far back did these idiots just put us?
rwood
when one of the most powerful societal controls was shame.
Have you seen the way people dress disfigure their bodies?
They have no shame, they just try for the shock value of being the weirdest person in the crowd.
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