A short squib of a crime article in the Daily Freeman on Friday has spawned 33 comments debating whether the death of a goose in the Town of Ulster last Wednesday was an act of homicidal destruction or just an accident.
According to the story, four teens killed the goose:
Police said they received a 911 report of an injured goose at at 6:32 p.m. Wednesday on Esopus Avenue near Ascot Park. An investigation determined that four white males, ranging in age from 16 to 18, repeatedly struck the goose in the head with a lacrosse ball until it was dead.
Sounds pretty bad, the first few commenters on the story say:
"You gotta be a pretty sick human being to attack a poor defenseless animal. I hope they catch these individuals."
"Absolutely sickening."
Lower down, some commenters assume that the suspects are rich kids:
"Let's see....three with cars and presumeably no jobs- just hanging around and picking on wild life- sounds about right for four overpriviledged kids. Probably from "good" families with parents who will be astounded that their child could do something like this..."
Others peg the incident as a redneck crime:
"Typical, counrty-backwards, ignorant, redneck thing to do!! Is life really that boring up there?? Wow!"
And some commenters insist it's not a crime at all:
"I would bet that this whole story got blown out of proportion. The fields across from ascot park are frequently used for sports and I imagine that the kid who killed the goose was just fooling around and was not thinking, not a future serial killer, not a danger to society, not an animal abuser..just some dumb kid who shot a lacrosse ball at a goose and killed it..."
"Do you really think 4 teenagers would just beat a goose? Why would any one really do that? I am sure that something happened, more then what is being reported, and some how the poor goose died..."
And then the thread devolves into a larger debate involving Sarah Palin and many sins of geese. No sign of a follow-up from the Freeman on what actually happened.
