BRISBANE, Australia, Feb. 1 (UPI) — Seventeen kangaroos were found dead beside an Australian road, and police are seeking a driver they believe deliberately ran them down.
The carcasses of 16 kangaroos, and one which survived but was later euthanized, were discovered Monday morning on a 330-foot stretch of a road in Wacol, near the city of Brisbane. The animals feed by the roadside in the evening, and locals avoid them, but tire tracks on the road indicated a driver intentionally swerved to strike them.
“You can see the person’s deliberately gone right across the road to the other side and hit several, and then come back on the road and hit another four or five,” said Michael Beatty of Australia’s RSPCA.
“They would have had a bull bar, otherwise they would not have any car left,” a reference to a reinforced bumper with an extra bar across a vehicle’s front grill.
Australia’s RSPCA, or Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, a non-profit organization with the legal power to perform investigations and initiate prosecutions, said it would begin a probe of the incident.
The area is known for its population of about 3,000 kangaroos, and it is not unusual for hundreds to mass at the edge of the road to find food in the cool evening.
