It’s not often you see a headline about the death of a Vegas bird. In fact, this story almost sounds like a sequel to the Hangover trilogy. Think about it. A twenty-five year old law student graduate, Justin Teixeira, from the University of California, Berkeley goes to Vegas and gets totally inebriated. That is nothing out of the ordinary. People go to Vegas and get wasted. We know that.
What happens next is the kicker. Justin, and two of his college buddies, Eric Cuellar and Hazhir Kargaran, began wandering around inside their Vegas Hotel’s wildlife habitat. Inside that habitat was an exotic bird. This exotic, now famous ‘Vegas bird’ was a helmeted guineafowl as reported by ABC News .
Justin and his buddies began chasing the Vegas bird, which was the size of a chicken, all around inside the wildlife area, laughing it up all the while. One can almost picture Bradley Cooper, Zach Galifianakis, Ed Helms and Justin Bartha reenacting this scene.
Finally, Justin caught the Vegas bird, and in his drunken state he literally “wrung the animal’s neck, tossed the bird’s body and flipped the head into some nearby rocks,” per ABC News . Wait. Is he related to Ozzy Osbourne ?
Much to Justin’s dismay, the wildlife habitat was visible to the Vegas hotel guests. In fact, much to the horror of the hotel guests, they witnessed the entire incident while eating breakfast. That will quench an appetite in no time.
Teixeira was charged with a felony, while his Vegas drunken buddies got off with a misdemeanor. While Justin’s buddies had to pay a fine and complete minimum community service as their punishment, Teixeira did not get off so easy for the Vegas bird death.
Justin plead guilty to killing another person’s animal in May 2013 in order to avoid jail time. Instead of going to the slammer, he went to a 190-day prison boot camp, in which Justin’s lawyer said he finished with top honors. ABC News said Justin’s lawyer tried to use that information to convince the judge to lessen the Vegas bird killer’s sentence. That didn’t happen.
According to CSMonitor.com , Justin was sentenced to up to four years of probation and sixteen hours of community service per month at an animal shelter for the duration of his probation. Even if he is working full time, or is back in school full time, Justin must complete the sixteen hours per month. No excuses.
That sentence was a slap on the wrist. If Justin, the Vegas bird killer, had gone to trial, he could have faced an additional two felonies and been sentenced to up to eight years in prison per ABC News .
While at the boot camp, Justin discovered he had passed his bar exam. But, in order to practice law, he can not have a felony on his record. His lawyer is trying to get the felony charge reduced to a misdemeanor. Otherwise, the Vegas bird killer will see the death of his career before it ever starts.
With the Vegas bird death on his record, Justin may have to settle for representing Ozzy Osbourne to the Planning Commission for removing the bats from Ozzy’s barn. I’m sure Justin could figure out a way to eliminate the bats. Possibly much like Turk, the Vegas bird.
Photo Credit: HDWallpappers.com and Collider.com