A Yorba Linda teenager pleaded not guilty today to six counts of animal abuse after video surfaced on MySpace.com showing him allegedly abusing a pug and two rabbits.
19 year old Joseph Anthony Deiss surrendered this morning at the Fullerton Justice Center and was being held on $10,000 bail. Diess released after his father posted bail. A pretrial hearing has been set for May 8.
The teenager, a part-time college student, was charged April 8 with three misdemeanor counts of animal cruelty and three misdemeanor counts of animal abuse by a caretaker after allegedly throwing a pug and two rabbits 15 to 30 feet in the air and allowing them to hit the ground. The video was allegedly shot in Deiss' backyard in June 2007.
PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, discovered the video on MySpace.com in March and turned it over to the Orange County District attorney's office the next day. They had urged the D.A.'s office to "vigorously" prosecute the teenager, who allegedly shot the video of himself abusing rabbits and a dog, then posted it on MySpace.
The tape is 14 minutes long and opens with Diess playing with a black pug dog and the two rabbits in the backyard. He is seen throwing the pug in the air, causing it to somersault as it falls back. He comes close to dropping the tiny animal several times, catching the dog by its legs or back.
Diess also tosses the pair of rabbits around 15 feet in the air. The rabbits, which hit the ground several times, either run or freeze. One is seen trying to hide in a box. He is also seen throwing a ball at the small creatures.
Deiss has apologized for throwing the rabbits, which he said he had bought as food for his two red-tailed boa constrictors, and the pug, which he said he had given to a family.
The most gruesome part of the tape shows Diess feeding the rabbits to the snakes. It shows them being eaten head first and struggling to get out of the snakes' mouth as they are consumed.
"I just posted it and kind of forgot about it. I didn't even realize that anyone was watching," he said of the video, which he removed from his MySpace page last month.
"It wasn't meant to be intentionally cruel," he said. "I can see that it was somewhat bad, but nothing got hurt. . . . People feed their snakes all the time."
http://ktla.trb.com/news/ktla-pugvideo,0,5600023.story
The video posted in the news article is terrible....made me sick to my stomach that he found fuckin HUMOR in that shit.
What a piece of fuckin SHIT!!!!!!!!
