A 25-year-old law student was sentenced to 120 hours of community service yesterday for repeatedly stomping an ibis to the point that it had to be euthanized after the bird apparently scared him while he was eating a sandwich in Brisbane, Australia.
The Australian reports that Andrew Quay Wee Meng was eating lunch when a bird "snuck up from behind" him and jumped onto his table:
Quay Wee Meng threw his food down, wrestled the bird to the ground and stomped on it five times. The court was told the bird's wing was shattered and a blow to its neck caused it such difficulty in breathing that it had to be put down.
Meng's lawyer explained in his defense that he has had a heightened fear of birds ever since he was "attacked by a large crow," and that this may have provoked the future lawyer's rampage.
But Meng was not given a harsher sentence because of his "youth" and his lack of a criminal past, according to the Australian paper The Herald Sun. The judge also explained that a conviction might keep Meng, who just finished his law degree, from getting a job.
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