18 September 2019

High School Football Players Get a Pass For Luring, Beating & Strangling a Duck to Death

Arnold the duck
UPC Photo of Sanctuary Duck, Arnold, by Davida G. Breier

 

“The duck-killing incident, which was posted on the internet, involved the animal being lured by a group of boys out of the waters of Lake Winnipesaukee’s Moultonborough Bay. It was beaten with a broomstick and later strangled to death.”
The Conway Daily Sun, Sept. 5, 2019

 

UPC President Karen Davis’s letter, published in New Hampshire’s Conway Daily Sun, addresses an episode in which 6 Kennett High School football players at a football training camp sadistically beat and strangled a duck to death in late August and posted their action on the Internet. Other than a few temporary suspensions from playing football, these students face no real consequences. The State Fish and Game Department refused to charge them for their animal cruelty crime, and the school and other authorities are colluding in order to protect “their boys.”

 

Karen Davis: No moral leadership to look up to in duck case

Published September 16, 2019 in The Conway Daily Sun

To the editor:

I share the disgust that many people have expressed about the decision of officials to give a pass to the football players who lured, tortured and strangled a defenseless, unoffending duck for sadistic pleasure.

Most likely, those involved consider themselves “manly,” though they are the opposite. Thuggery and protection of thuggery is ugly. These football players violated the New Hampshire animal cruelty law and appear to have gotten away with their crime because football and blood “sports” are more important to those responsible for upholding the law than an innocent life beaten and strangled to death. There is no one to respect in this matter, no one to look up to for moral leadership.

Do any of these men feel even a speck of pity for the duck and the terror and pain she felt as she was being killed for fun? Do any of these football players feel a speck of remorse for the gratuitous cruelty they perpetrated against an innocent, helpless creature? Or are they all high-fiving each other for being shielded by their elders so that they can now “get on with their lives”? The situation is reprehensible.

Karen Davis, President
United Poultry Concerns
Machipongo, Va.

 

More Letters to the Editor of The Conway Daily Sun:
These letters go back through September 5th and are virtually unanimous in their anger over the official whitewash of this criminal episode.