News

Although police once thought burning couches was a serious crime, a new form of vandalism has caught their attention. A pet sheep was stolen, bashed, set on fire, and the dead body dumped back at its original Clermiston Ave residence in Dunedin last week.

Police were called to the scene when the burned sheep was discovered at approximately 1:30am last Sunday. The carcass of “Larry the Lamb” had a crushed skull and clear signs of severe burns to its body. “Whether it was alive or dead when it was burnt, either way it has met a fairly cruel and unnecessary way to die,” police said.

This brutal and cruel treatment has the police looking for the culprit, who may have stolen the pet and taken it to a nearby address where a party was held that night.

The lamb was a family pet to a two-year-old girl. The father described the pair as “best friends” and the young girl “absolutely loved him, loved him to bits.” The loss has hit the family hard and they are “unable to understand why anyone would do such a thing.”

In the face of such horrid animal cruelty, a local farmer has offered the family a replacement pet lamb. However, the family couldn’t accept the offer due to the child moving to a different home later in the year. The father claimed that it was “the sweetest thing I have heard all day.” Critic notes that when you wake up in the morning to find your beloved pet dead, burned and smashed on your front doorstep, it wouldn’t be hard to achieve this.

The father has not told the young girl what has happened to poor Larry the Lamb. To avoid telling the girl about the burned and crushed carcass, the father has told her that Larry is currently on holiday.

Animal cruelty is a serious crime, and any individual with information about the event is urged to contact their nearest police station.