PETA People On Trial

For Animal Cruelty. 31 Felony Counts. But it should have been more. Meet Andy Cook and Adria Hinkle, two dimwitted criminal employees of PETA who went around the Hampton Roads area and parts of North Carolina in a PETA van collecting unwanted animals from shelters and homes under the guise that the animals would be put up for adoption in Norfolk. But instead of putting them up for adoption, these two were killing the animals in the van and then dumping the furry bodies in trash bags all around rural Southern Virginia and in a dumpster at a Piggly-Wiggly in Ahoskie, North Carolina.

When they were busted by Ahoskie police, who had setup a sting to catch whomever it was that kept dumping animal remains for weeks, they found Hinkle and Cook in the van, along with 31 dead animals.

From the NewsObserver here:

Today, two employees of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, a radical animal-rights group that opposes meat-eating, are on trial for the strangest of charges: killing animals.

PETA is based in Norfolk, Va., but its work has international scope. The group, which raises more than $25 million a year from 1.6 million supporters, opposes any human use of animals, whether for food, fashion or research. In the more than two decades since its founding, it has become a major threat to medical researchers, meatpackers, fur sellers and others.

Now, two of its employees stand accused of tossing garbage bags full of euthanized cats and dogs into a Dumpster behind a Piggly Wiggly in Hertford County, 130 miles northeast of Raleigh.

Adria J. Hinkle and Andrew B. Cook, both of whom work in PETA’s Norfolk office, are charged with 31 counts each of animal cruelty, a felony that can carry prison time, along with littering and obtaining property by false pretenses.

Now, jurors will decide whether Hinkle and Cook were, as PETA argues, providing humane deaths to animals that would otherwise have been painfully killed in gas chambers — or whether, as several local officials say, they were taking animals on the promise of finding them homes and secretly killing them.

A PETA spokeswoman, Kathy Guillermo, said PETA never wanted to get into the business of euthanizing animals. But she said the group couldn’t ignore the horrible conditions in animal shelters around Norfolk and in northeastern North Carolina. The group now euthanizes thousands of animals a year.

“Euthanasia is a better alternative to sitting in a stinking pound,” Guillermo said.

So PETA would rather have pets slaughtered and dumped on the sides of the road than sit in an SPCA adoption center? The photo below was from the scene of the cleanup.

I wonder why these two losers still have a job at PETA? Obviously because PETA condones such behavior from its employees. No word on whether or not Adria Hinkle put on a little makeup for her court appearance.