Pink flamingo kicked to death Czech Jihlava zoo: What led to three boys tormenting a group of rare American flamingos before killing one?
Three primary school children kicked a rare pink flamingo to death at a zoo in the Czech Republic after throwing rocks at the birds in their enclosure.
The boys, aged five, six, and eight, attacked a flock of the American flamingos at Jihlava Zoo, in the Vysočina Region notes the dailymail.
After scaling a fence, the boys hurled wood and stones at the birds before proceeding to kick two of them.
One of the male breeding birds was killed while a female bird received serious injuries.
An open fracture caused the bird to bleed out. The other injured flamingo was so badly bruised that zoo vets were not sure whether it would survive noted the mirror.
The dead flamingo had been a survivor of the floods at Prague Zoo in 2002. He was 16 years old and father to eight babies. Flamingos tend to live to around 30-40.
From there the boys fled into a nearby woodland before eventually being caught, the result of one of the boys wearing a distinct yellow jumper. One managed to escape. The boys were detained in Jakubské Square.
Martin Maláč, a spokesman for the zoo speaking to Czech media said the boys had expressed no remorse for what they had done to the birds, while even suggesting the attack may have come about because the boys ‘were bored’.
The birds said the man had ‘undergone severe stress shock.’
Police are now investigating and will ask the boys’ parents for compensation following their act of animal cruelty. Police said as a result of the boys being so young it is unlikely that they will be prosecuted.
Told Zoologist Jan Vašák via Czech media outlet TNCZ : ‘First, they pelted them with stones and then one of them kicked it.
‘Fortunately, one of them had a distinct yellow sweatshirt. We immediately phoned police officers and so two of them we managed to catch far from the park. The third escaped.’
He said the flamingo was valued at 2,000 euros (more than 50,000 crowns).
Zoo employee Richard Viduna asked for the public’s help in reporting cases of animal abuse, saying: ‘It would be helpful for us if the visitors would pay attention to acts such as these and report them.’
Adding, ‘With this male we bred a lot, he had produced eight children’.
‘The zoo without bars’ is home for 200 rare species of animals, including 17 species classified in European breeding programs.
Jihlava Zoo specialises in raising and breeding felines, apes and reptiles.
Why the boys ultimately chose to abuse the pink flamingos is yet to be necessarily understood as debate ensues after it was disclosed that the offending boys were of Roma background.
