Videos showing people taping mice to fireworks in Pittsburgh neighborhood under investigation
After social media videos showed people lighting up mice with fireworks, Pittsburgh police said multiple young men will soon be facing animal cruelty charges.
Detective Alex Castanzo is still taken aback by what he and his colleagues watched in the past week, which he calls the torture and murder of mice.
"There's not really an excuse at this point for doing that to animals, whether they're small or big," Castanzo said. "This kind of behavior with adults at this age already is extremely concerning, and the means that they're doing it is pretty horrifying."
The Pittsburgh Police Violence Prevention Unit on Aug. 13 learned about videos on social media from the Northview Heights neighborhood, showing men attaching mice to fireworks with duct tape and lighting the devices.
"To be just blunt about how it was, they were strapping with tape live mice onto large bottle rockets or mortars," Castanzo said.
Castanzo said as they explode in the sky, people are laughing, and at one point, someone is seen hitting a mouse already strapped to a firework with a stick before launching it.
Let alone the cruelty, Castanzo said this could have caused serious damage to such a dense community.
"In one of the videos, one of these large bottle rocket-type mortars curves to the side and goes directly towards the row homes and cars and explodes by the vehicles and house," Castanzo said.
When detectives responded to Mount Pleasant Road, they said they recovered a plastic bin, remnants from fireworks and a roll of tape.
They also reviewed surveillance video and interviewed witnesses before executing a search warrant and detaining three to five men who are being considered suspects.
Through their investigation, they found the mice were not stolen but bought at the Petco stores on McKnight Road in Ross Township and at the Waterworks Mall.
"We believe we watched about four mice go through similar fates," Castanzo said.
Now as they work to make arrests, they hope to prevent the potential for more severe violence.
"We do see a lot, that kids in our areas where we work do graduate to other crimes, if, you know, it's not nipped in the bud early on," Castanzo said.
Police said the incidents remain under investigation.
Some of the men will also be facing charges related to drug possession.