Someone in Jupiter, Florida called the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission over the weekend to report a dead alligator, which is already a sentence with several possible endings, none of them good. The ending in this case: the gator had a hammer-shaped wound in its forehead, because apparently nothing in Florida is allowed to die from just one cause.
Investigators tracked down Desmond Keogh, who admitted he shot the alligator once in the head and then, having already accomplished the objective, struck it several more times with a hammer anyway. This is less “putting an animal out of its misery” and more “a man who bought a hammer and was determined to use it on something.”
Keogh also did not have active alligator tags, which in Florida is the bureaucratic equivalent of fishing without a license, except the fish weighs 400 pounds and comes with teeth. He’s now facing charges for illegally killing a protected alligator, discharging a firearm where he shouldn’t have, and using a firearm in the commission of a felony — three separate crimes stacked on top of an animal he could have simply left alone.
The alligator was not available for comment. The hammer’s current whereabouts are unknown.
Don’t take our word for it: CBS12 has the full story. It’s exactly as described.