http://www.courttv.com/news/2007/0118/PETA_ctv.html
Trial set to start for PETA workers caught euthanizing, dumping cats and
dogs
Adria Hinkle, who now faces felony charges, was suspended for 90 days
after the incident.
By Harriet Ryan
Court TV
The dog carcasses always appeared late on Wednesday nights, wrapped in
black trash bags and stuffed in the Dumpster behind the Piggly Wiggly
supermarket.
Over a period of three weeks in the summer of 2005, police officers in
the small town of Ahoskie, N.C., pulled the bodies of 80 animals from
the trash bin. Some were puppies, some were full-grown. Most were mutts.
On the fourth week, officers set up a stakeout, and when a white van
pulled up to the dumpster, they pounced.
If the van's cargo — 10 dead dogs and three dead cats in black bags —
was to be expected, its occupants were not. The driver and the passenger
were employees of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and
the vehicle was registered to the organization.
The workers, Adria Hinkle, 28, and Andrew Cook, 25, were arrested and
later indicted on 24 felony charges, including 21 counts of animal
cruelty, for injecting lethal doses of an anesthetic into strays they
had just collected from county shelters and a veterinarian's office.
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For PETA, the largest animal rights organization in the world, it was a
public relations nightmare. The group, whose many celebrity supporters
include Pamela Anderson and Alec Baldwin, made its name by obtaining and
publicizing disturbing images of torturous lab experiments, blood-soaked
fur farms and shocking abuse of circus animals.
Andrew Cook still works for PETA.
Now it was confronted with photos of a graphic scene of its own
employees' making: a lifeless cream-colored puppy being lifted out off a
pile of trash. A dead Dalmatian sprawled on its back. A jet-black cat
and her two kittens cinched in a trash bag.
"It's hideous," the president of PETA, Ingrid Newkirk, acknowledged two
days after the arrests. "I think this is so shocking it's bound to hurt
our work."
Despite this assessment, Newkirk and PETA stood by Hinkle and Cook in
the coming months, consistently advocating for their innocence and
hiring the legal team that will represent them at the trial that begins
Jan. 22 in Hertford County Superior Court.
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