Georgia teens filmed 'disturbing' Snapchat of them slaughtering baby opossums, police say
Two Cobb County, Ga., teenagers have been charged with aggravated animal cruelty after police say they filmed themselves slaughtering five opossums and then shared the clip on social media, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
"As a police officer, I've seen some disturbing things, and this was towards the top of that," Cobb Police officer Sarah O'Hara told WXIA.
Police say 19-year-old Rocquavious Williams and a 16-year-old were arrested at North Cobb High School on May 9 and charged with five counts of aggravated cruelty to animals, Patch reported. Williams was also charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
A classmate at the high school saw video of the teens allegedly killing the opossums on Snapchat, and had been so disturbed he reported it to police, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. The deaths had occurred sometime in April, according to the paper.
In Georgia, opossums are a game animal and can be hunted without limit from mid-October to the end of February under various rules, licenses and restrictions.
At first police wouldn't describe the details of how the teens allegedly killed the opossums, but O'Hara told the Marietta Daily Journal it could not have counted as hunting.
“The way in which they killed the animals is not consistent with harvesting ... There’s no reason for this kind of abuse,” she told the paper.
A warrant eventually obtained by the AJC and WXIA detailed the brutal deaths of the possums. According to the warrant, the two teens allegedly filmed themselves beating a mother possum to death with a baseball bat and pouring a toxic mixture of bleach and ammonia on her babies.
"It's really disturbing, scary. They have to be punished for it," a neighbor of the teens told WXIA. "I'm glad they got caught before it was a small child or something else they would go after."
Cobb County School District spokesperson John Stafford told the Marietta Daily Journal the alleged crime had not taken place during school hours or on school property.
This story was originally published May 15, 2018 at 10:52 AM with the headline "Georgia teens filmed 'disturbing' Snapchat of them slaughtering baby opossums, police say."