Friends and family of a man who was convicted of torturing a kangaroo fiercely confronted reporters covering the sentencing.
Dylan Leslie Griffin, 22, was sentenced to 11 months in jail over the animal torture incident.
He was one of four men charged last year over a series of disturbing animal attacks, which were uncovered after police discovered videos of the incidents on a mobile phone they seized in an unrelated arrest.
In one video, Griffin shoots a badly beaten kangaroo through the eye at close range with a rifle. Two other men have already been sentenced. Griffin pleaded guilty to animal cruelty charges late last year.
He was seen in the video punching a kangaroo with steel dusters, then shooting the animal in the eye. He was granted a 25 per cent discount for an early guilty plea and he will be eligible for parole after serving half his sentence.
A one month sentence for possessing knuckle dusters will be served concurrently.
The Animal Justice Party AJP Western Australia said the video taken by police showed one marsupial was burnt, shot with a firearm, spat on, kicked and held while punched with knuckle dusters.Another kangaroo was stabbed more than 20 times and then kicked in the head
The kangaroo was punched until both men’s knuckledusters were covered in blood, and all participants could be heard laughing in the video. He received a further month for possession of the knuckledusters, to be served concurrently, and he will be eligible for parole after serving six months.
As Griffin’s family and supporters walked from the court after the sentencing, his father punched and broke the cover lens of one news team’s camera and another male slammed a camera into a journalist’s face, as he took a photo, damaging his eye and cutting his lip.
Magistrate Gregory Benn described the animal cruelty as “active, gleeful and sadistic.”
Griffin’s legal counsel tried to submit that Griffin was suffering from grief over the deaths of family members nearly two years previous and had acted in a haze of drugs and alcohol, and that he had not gone out that night with the intention of harming an animal.
Magistrate Benn commented:
I’m not sure how much difference that made to the kangaroo.”
