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9-Year-Old Called ASPCA About Sister's Hamster Slaughter
By
Ben Yakas
Published Mar 10, 2011
Modified Mar 10, 2011
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By
Ben Yakas
Published Mar 10, 2011
Modified Mar 10, 2011
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Yesterday, a Brooklyn teenager was arrested and accused of killing her nine-year-old brothers' pet hamster. Today, more details have emerged about the incident, revealing the messy backdrop that led to a hamster getting a necropsy.
Monique Smith, 19, allegedly killed her little brother's hamster in an apparent revenge scheme involving at least one other dead hamster. Smith, who has a two-month-old child, lives with 10 of her 12 siblings on Putnam Avenue in Bushwick; according to City Room, her mother, Theresa Smith, the troubles started after she bought a hamster, Princess Stephanie, for the nine-year-old, Brandon. The eldest sibling, who is 25, deliberately killed that hamster for unclear reasons—he felt very remorseful, and bought his brother three new hamsters to make up for it.
Somehow, this act angered Monique Smith in turn. Theresa Smith noted that anger issues and violence run through their large family, eerily telling the Times, “Thirty-two years ago,” she said, “my brother strangled my sister to death.” The Post says she was trying to get back at her 12-year-old brother, Aaron, but the City Room implies it was an act of jealousy which led to her attacking the hamster. Either way, she picked up the biggest of the three hamsters, Sweetie, “took it out of the cage, and she slammed it on the floor,” killing it on impact.
A distraught Brandon then called the ASPCA's help line on his own on the day of the killing in June last year, and an investigation began. After a nine-month "hunt" for a suspect the ASPCA described as evasive and uncooperative, their Human Law Enforcement (HLE) officers arrested the young woman. Monique Smith has been hit with a felony charge aggravated cruelty to animals, along with two misdemeanors, torturing animals and endangering the welfare of a child; she could face up to two years in prison for the felony charge alone.
The ASPCA told us that, "We typically don't deal with the kinds of cases like the hamster one from today, however it's not remarkable when we do." HLE assistant director Joseph Pentangelo added that size shouldn't matter when it comes to pets: “It may be a fish, it may be a hamster, it may not be the type of a pet that people commonly hold dear. But to the people who own them, they are.”
Tagged
aspca
hamsters
jealousy
necropsy
revenge
Ben Yakas
Ben Yakas is a former Gothamist reporter.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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