14 DAY TRIAL // Back in November 2012, a Patas monkey passed away after suffering several major injuries at the hand of a man who had broken into the Boise Zoo in Idaho and attempted to steal it.
The 22-year-old responsible for the monkey’s death has now been sentenced to spending 7 years in prison.
As reported at the time when the incident occurred, Michael Watkins was pretty much drunk when he decided that it might not be such a bad idea to break into a zoo and steal a monkey.
As was to be expected, the animal put up a fight and bit the man. This caused the latter to get really angry and hit the monkey with a tree branch he found in the animal's enclosure.
By the looks of it, Michael Watkins also kicked the monkey several times.
The blows crashed the Patas monkey's skull, and also broke its neck vertebrae. Despite efforts to save the animal's life, its injuries eventually proved fatal.
Once found and taken into police custody, Michael Watkins admitted that his actions had been immature to say the least, and that he should not have beaten the monkey.
Thus, he did plead guilty to the charges he had been faced with, yet both he and his attorney made a case of how the monkey's death was no more and no less than a result of a prank which had somehow gone from bad to worse.
“I know that my actions were selfish, and they impacted both Zoo Boise and the public, and Boise itself,” 22-year-old Michael Watkins reportedly told the judge and the other people present at his trial.
According to BubbleNews, it will be two years before this so-called monkey killer will be eligible for parole.
Should he complete a Rider program, he might be able to get 5 years of supervised probation, the same source informs us.