COCONUT GROVE, Fla. – Maria Cristina Cuesta is a longtime resident of Coconut Grove.
What she saw around 8 p.m. Sunday through the view of her front door camera left her horrified.
“I saw a boy grabbing a peacock in the worst way possible,” she said. “It broke my heart the way they took him. He suffered.”
Resident Jon Edwards was coming home with food when he says he saw the same thing.
“I saw a truck blocking the street here and I saw two gentlemen,” he said. “One approached a peacock and actually was able to pick up the peacock, which you don’t see that often -- they usually run away.”
Neighbors walked up to the sidewalk where the peacock was taken, near the corner of Halissee Street and Hilola Street, and found feathers and a pool of blood.
Neighbors quickly compared notes about the incident in a neighborhood chat. One believed they may have found what caused the bird to bleed.
“It broke my heart and made me physically ill,” said neighbor Cathy Moghari. “The fact that this individual could pick it up and throw it in the back of a truck meant that it had to be really injured, and we were wondering what could’ve done it and I was discussing it with my friend. She said, ‘I found this in my yard,’ and she described and I said, ‘Save it for me,’ and I went and picked it up.”
The neighbors took their evidence to Miami police, who are now looking into the incident, along with Miami-Dade Animal Services.
Miami Police Commander Dan Kerr oversees Coconut Grove.
“Right now there isn’t much to go on besides the fact that we have the evidence that was left on the scene, and the circumstantial evidence of the witnesses,” said Kerr.
He says there are rules in the books that prohibit the injuring of peacocks -- even taking them is against the rules. He says police need more proof that darts were used to hurt them.
“We don’t yet have enough evidence to say that that occurred, but we believe something certainly happened and there was a peacock that may have been injured,” he said.
Moghari and other neighbors told Local 10 News they want to see serious consequences for the alleged birdnappers.
“That’s not normal behavior,” she said. “That’s not horsing around -- that’s animal abuse and animal cruelty.”