Carisa Lee

The man seen in a video abus­ing and even­tu­al­ly killing a caiman in Aranguez, San Juan, has been ar­rest­ed.

He was yes­ter­day lo­cat­ed by mem­bers of the El So­cor­ro Cen­tre for Wildlife Con­ser­va­tion (ECWC), who felt the man need­ed to be held ac­count­able for his ac­tions.

Founder Ri­car­do Meade said the cen­tre re­ceived nu­mer­ous calls from hurt peo­ple about the in­ci­dent and de­cid­ed to do some­thing about it.

“Evil thrives when good peo­ple do noth­ing,” Meade said.

It is il­le­gal to cap­ture, harm, or kill game an­i­mals out­side of the hunt­ing sea­son.

And ac­cord­ing to the amend­ed An­i­mals (Dis­ease and Im­por­ta­tion) Act, at Chap.67:02 (as­sent­ed to on Ju­ly 3, 2020) sec­tion 18 A, “Any per­son who cru­el­ly beats, ill-treats, starves, over­drives, over­rides, over­loads, abus­es, tor­tures, ne­glects or oth­er­wise mal­treats any an­i­mal com­mits an of­fence of $200,000 fine and im­pris­on­ment for a term of 5 years on sum­ma­ry con­vic­tion.”

Meade said they start­ed their search for the man at Bound­ary Road in El So­cor­ro and Aranguez Main Road. He said he stopped by one of the stores in the back­ground of the video and the man was sit­ting by a bar. He said he called the po­lice and with­in 10 min­utes they ar­rived.

Meade said the man said he was at­tempt­ing to save the caiman from get­ting bounced.

The of­fi­cers ex­plained to him that he had com­mit­ted an of­fence and took him to the Barataria Po­lice Sta­tion.

Meade said he hopes the pub­lic can draw some lev­el of as­sur­ance that there are laws to pro­tect an­i­mals from cru­el­ty and abuse. He said the po­lice’s quick re­sponse al­so showed there are po­lice of­fi­cers who will step up and not let evil pre­vail. CL