A local man was arrested on Sunday for trapping and killing a pigeon, Public Security Police (PSP) spokesman Leong Chi Seng said at a press briefing yesterday.
The 63-year-old suspect surnamed Ng works as a taxi driver.
According to Leong, a passer-by reported to the Public Security Police on Sunday afternoon that he or she saw a white pigeon caught in an animal trap falling from a height near Lou Lim Ieoc Garden. Leong did not reveal the gender of the passer-by.
PSP officers investigated the case and identified Ng as the suspect who lives in the neighbourhood. The officers went to Ng’s home which is on the top-floor of a tenement building near the public park. They found 12 traps in his flat.
Under questioning, Ng told the police that he bought 40 traps last year online from the mainland for several hundred yuan. He used food scraps or cured meat as bait and put them on the rooftop to catch rats, but occasionally the traps also caught birds. He then discarded the traps and bird carcasses in a nearby public rubbish bin, Leong said.
According to Leong, the officers went to the rooftop to investigate and found no animal traps, but there were suspected bird bloodstains on the floor and a plastic bucket containing bird feathers. Ng insisted that he had not eaten any of the birds he caught and could not remember how many birds he had trapped. Leong said that this was the sixth such case reported to the Public Security Police in the past two months. The police are still investigating whether the previous five cases that occurred near the park were committed by Ng.
Ng has been transferred to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP), facing an animal cruelty charge, according to Leong.
This handout photo provided by the Public Security Police (PSP) yesterday shows PSP officers escorting the animal trapping suspect to a police car on Sunday.
A dozen animal traps seized from the suspect are displayed at the Public Security Police (PSP) pressroom during yesterday’s press conference about the case.
Photo: Camy Tam
