Teenagers accused of torturing sharks
LONG BEACH, Calif. – Three Long Beach middle school students have been arrested for allegedly breaking into the Aquarium of the Pacific and torturing and killing two sharks and a stingray, police say.
The attack occurred sometime after 11 p.m. Sunday, when the fish were last seen alive, said Perry Hampton, the aquarium’s director of aquarium husbandry. Aquarium staff arrived early Monday morning and found debris in the shark habitat and the velvety black cownose stingray on the concrete pool deck. They then noticed other sharks missing.
A 2-foot-long striped bamboo shark was found on the mesh overhang of the bird exhibit next door to the shark lagoon. When the aquarium staff searched further, they found a 3-foot-long chocolate brown nurse shark called Michelle in bushes next to a parking lot.
“She had been dragged over concrete, rock, dirt, who knows what,” said the aquarium’s Cecile Fisher, who added that Michelle had been at the aquarium since it opened more than six years ago. Leaving a shark or ray out of water would suffocate them, Hampton said, like “choking a person of air.”
Aquarium officials said the fish were also stabbed or poked with plastic pipes.
Another shark – a leopard shark – suffered superficial wounds suggesting it also had been struck with a pipe, and three or four other small sharks had been tossed into the large shark tank, where they survived but could have been eaten.
On Monday at about 9 p.m., a security guard called police after spotting a boy dropping over an 8-foot chain link fence into the shark lagoon area. The boy and three other teenagers were chased and caught along Shoreline Drive, said Long Beach Police Sgt. David Cannan
Detectives believe the boys were attempting to break into the aquarium for a second time. The youths – three 13-year-olds and a 14-year-old – are students in the Long Beach Unified School District.
The three teens suspected in the Sunday attack were being held Tuesday at a juvenile facility on suspicion of felony animal cruelty, conspiracy to commit animal cruelty and misdemeanor trespassing, Cannan said. The fourth teenager apparently was not present during the Sunday night attack and was being held on a felony conspiracy charge.
Police said the suspects had no previous criminal records. Cannan said he could not reveal much else about them other than to say they were “cooperating” with investigators. The Los Angeles district attorney’s office will decide whether to file criminal charges against the suspects.