The girl shown in a widely circulated video drowning six newborn puppies in a river has been identified by police in Bosnia after a massive grassroots internet effort to find her.
Much of the effort to identify the blonde teen, who wore a bright red hoodie as she drowned the six yipping puppies, was spearheaded by /b/, who have a history of finding and identifying animal abusers. Users of 4chan were also largely responsible for locating the woman who was filmed on CCTV in Britain last month trapping a pet cat in a trash can for fifteen hours. The cat in that case survived the trauma. 4chan users have successfully stepped in to ID cat abusers prior to that as well.
The puppy drowning vigilante campaign got a boost when Transformers director Michael Bay offered a $50,000 reward for information leading to the girl’s apprehension by authorities:
“There is a disturbing video going around the news outlets. It’s a video of blonde young woman in a red sweatshirt casually tossing squealing puppies into the fast-moving river one by one.”
Bay promised the large bounty to anyone with “information leading to the arrest and successful prosecution of the woman in the red sweatshirt and the person who shot this act of cruelty.” Police worked with information from animal protection groups in Bosnia, but have not identified the girl because she is a juvenile.